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nion Square Series. No. 2. Price, 50 cents. 


SUED Monthly. FEBRUARY, 1894. Annual Subscription, $6.00. 

Entered at the Ne w York postofflee as second-class mail matter, v " 





A Game at Platonics 


AND 


Other Stories. 


By F. C. PHILIPS, 


Author of ''As in a Looking-Glass/' "One Never Knows/* 


etc. 


NEW YORK: 

CLEVELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

19 Union Square. 











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v-:^«30 







A GAME AT PLATONICS 


AND 


OTHER STORIES. 


•4 

■f 

By F/C. PHILIPS, 

Author of in a Lookmg-Glass,” '"One Never Knows,” etc. 

0 


Ur 

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FtL 3 1894 ,J 


NEW YORK: 

CLEVELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY; 
19 Union Square. 



Copyright, 1894, by 

The Cleveland Publishing Company, 
19 Union Square, 

New York. 

(All rights reserved.) 



JJS- 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

A Game at Platonics 7 

An Unwelcome Resurrection 21 

Black and White 35 

A Love Story 45 

The Fortune of War 57 

Festina Lente 67 

A Careful Mother 75 

Marian Gray, Spinster 85 

Money Makes the Mare to Go 97 

A Lucky Young Man 105 

In this World one can Never Tell 115 

You Mustn't Play with Love 125 

Sleep, Gentle Sleep," 135 

Unlucky in Love, Lucky at Play 147 

Of Course 159 

Love and Money 169 

A Doctor in Difficulties 179 


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A GAME AT PLATONICS. 



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A GAME AT PLATONICS. 


She wanted to be a “ sister” to him, owned it dif- 
fidently, with a recollection that the comic papers 
always considered it a joke ; repeated it more firmly, 
remembering that the comic papers’ conception of a 
joke was odd. She wanted to be a sister to him, and 
then — It was the funniest thing in the world. 

Frank Featherleigh was the only son of Colonel 
Featherleigh, of the Scots Guards. He had not em- 
braced his father’s career, and gone up for the army ; 
he had read for the bar. He had eaten his dinners, 
and been called, and had his name painted in fascinat- 
ing capitals beneath the friend’s whose chambers he 
shared. He had, in fact, performed all the prelimi- 
naries with praiseworthy punctiliousness. Then he sat 
down, and looked out at the tulips, and waited for 
solicitors to discover his ability. 

He waited some time; solicitors are a slow race. 
He wrote little poems, which were never accepted, and 
he read a great many novels, which he hid when the 
door opened ; and he went to a lot of theatres — he 
had always been theatrically inclined. Hone of these 
things produced an income, or in any way augmented 
the three hundred a year accruing from the paternal 


8 


A GAME AT PLATONICS. 


purse. Ultimately he took the train down to Twick- 
enham, and told his father he was going to be an actor 
instead. 

He had once heard an anecdote of a fellow who, 
having come an unmitigated cropper, had met the 
stormy, “ And now what are you going to do, sir ? ” 
with the careless rejoinder, ‘‘ How I’m going on the 
stage ! ” The hero of the anecdote— it was one of the 
many lies told of actors and actresses — was supposed 
to be a popular comedian whose 7iom de theatre had 
become a household word. The tale recurred to him 
in the drawing-room, as he looked at his father’s face. 
He felt rather like the fellow himself, although he 
had not come any cropper, and was without any pros- 
pects of becoming a popular comedian. 

“You are going on the stage?” gasped the 
colonel, 

“That's the idea,” said Frank; “deuced nice pro- 
fession. I’ve always been in request as an amateur, 
don’t you know ; and if I can make forty or fifty 
pounds a week by the regular thing, I really don’t 
see why I shouldn’t do it.” 

“How look here,” answered the other, “you are an 
ass. I don’t want to be rude, upon my soul, but let’s 
talk about something else. Pretend you’re sane, and 
have a Hock-and-seltzer.” 

“ I am perfectly sane,” said Frank, “ and I don’t 
like to be called an ass. I have a fancy for the stage 


A GAME A T PLATONICS. 


9 


and I am going to gratify it. Tell me to ‘ go on and 
prosper,’ governor, and ring for the liquid ! ” 

“ Your mother,” growled the colonel, would have 
had a fit.” 

“My mother — God bless her memory — has been 
beyond the possibility of fits for ten years. That 
introduction seems to me irrelevant. I don’t expect 
to get fifty pounds a week as a commencing salary, 
but whatever I start with will be more than I am 
earning at the bar, and you can’t say it isn’t practi- 
cal for a man to want to make a living.” 

“A ‘living,’ sir — ‘practical.’ Are you starving, 
have you got to earn bread -and-cheese ? Do you sup- 
pose I expected to see you a Q. C. in five minutes ? 
You’re in the profession of a gentleman; stick to 
it.” 

“ I am going on the stage,” repeated his son. 

“You may go to the devil,” said the colonel, “but 
you won’t do it with my assistance, I pledge you my 
word. If you insist on making a mountebank of your- 
self, you may live by your exertions.” 

“ Well,” said Frank, “at a pinch I will do that. I’m 
very sorry you’ve taken it so badly, ‘gov,’ but the 
thing’s my metier, and I’m going in for it. The allow- 
ance would have been a big help, of course ; still I’m 
not aware that Kean or Irving ever had an allowance, 
and I’ll manage without, myself.” 

Then he assisted himself to a Ilabana from the open 


10 


A GAME A T PLATONICS. 


box, and thanked bis father for the light that was 
proffered, and took his leave. 

He had about thirty pounds, and he went to an 
agent, to whom he paid a guinea as a booking-fee. 
The agent told him it was “a nice day,” on every sub- 
sequent occasion that he called there. That was all 
the benefit he derived from the guinea. After a 
month he went to another agent, to whom he paid 
five shillings; and he learnt from him every morning 
when he called there that “ things were very quiet.” 
The date for the quarterly £75 arrived without the 
cheque. The colonel had evidently meant what he 
said ; the outlook was getting serious. 

If his only reason for throwing up the bar had been 
the pecuniary one on which he insisted, he would 
probably have hesitated now ; but he had stage-fever, 
and the sight of the offices with the photographs and 
play-bills inflamed his ardor. 

He read the Era assiduously, and, over his adopted 
name of “Montgomery,” applied to half the adver- 
tisers in the “ wanted ” column. He continued this 
occupation for several weeks without getting a reply ; 
then at last an answer came. 

He had, quite by accident, Avritten to about the best 
woman in England for him. Miss Mollie Melton Avas 
not renowned for large salaries, but on the other hand 
she was not exacting in her requirements. Providing 
the amateurs from whom her ranks were recruited 


A GAME AT PLATONICS. 


11 


were of good appearance, and could “ dress the parts,” 
she was perfectly willing they should play ‘‘ prominent 
business” to their hearts’ content. The novices 
gained experience, and the management ran the tour 
on economical lines. She travelled with what is 
technically known as a “fit up” — that is to say a 
portable theatre that can be erected in the lecture- 
halls. She only visited the minor towns of the 
kingdom, and she and her leading man supplied quite 
enough of the professional element to satisfy the kind 
of audience that patronized her. 

Frank was a handsome young fellow ; and, in reply 
to the inquiry about his wardrobe, he had uttered the 
open sesame “ Poole.” He drew eighteen shillings a 
week, and was cast for “ walking gentleman ” and 
“juveniles” at once, because it would have been a sin 
if such nice suits of clothes were not displayed. 

It was a severe test of his dramatic ambition to 
have to exist on such a sum, but he did it, and felt a 
hero and a budding Kean. Every actor who lives on 
eighteen shillings a week feels a Kean. Kean lived 
on eighteen shillings. He wrote to his father telling 
him he had changed his surname to Montgomery, 
and then he threw himself heart and soul into his 
vocation. 

The company he found rather congenial. There 
were two or three young fellows whose salaries would 
barely have sufficed for their former cigarette bills. 


12 


A GAMN A2’ rLA2VmCS. 


and there was a girl who attracted him from the 
morning of his first rehearsal. 

She was a sunny little blonde, called Daisy West; 
and the history of her debut^ he learnt on acquaintance, 
resembled his own; the principal difference being 
that her mother — her father was dead — had given a 
grudging consent. A sister accompanied her to play 
propriety, and another sister was left at home to 
enliven mamma. 

He got very friendly with Miss Daisy as the weeks 
went by, and the “Montgomery’’ he had assumed 
grew to have quite a familiar and delightful ring, 
enunciated by her voice. Then, too, her sister, Amy, 
was not a bad sort, though of her he saw less, as she 
did not act. The Misses AVest used to take long 
walks in the daytime, and he acquired the habit of 
meeting them, and of seeing them as far as their door 
after the performance, and of choosing the longest 
route on the pretext that it was more respectable. 
Courtships on a theatrical tour are very piquant; 
they have more variety than in other grooves of 
life, and the girl always has so many mortifications 
to confide, which are agreeable to console. 

It was when he discovered he was in love with her 
that he learnt she felt like a sister towards him. To 
do her justice she honestly believed it ; she was too 
young to consider his prospects as an actor, and of his 
parentage she was ignorant. 


A GAJ/B AT PLATONIOS. 


13 


“With the aiTection a sister might feel,” she said, 
and then she broke otf short with the remembrance 
mentioned at the beginning. 

“But, indeed,” she added, after a pause, “ if you 
were my brother I should be so truly glad ; we never 
had a brother, we three girls, and over and over again 
Ave’ve wished for one.” 

“ The others’ wish might be gratified easily enough,” 
he reminded her. 

“Thanks,” she said, smiling; “but that would 
hardly be the same thing.” 

“ The ‘ greatest good of the greatest number.’ It 
would be nice and unselfish of you.” 

“You’ll forget all about me after a while.” 

“ Oh, yes, that’s a woman’s stock excuse for heart- 
lessness; she wants to believe the man has a bad 
memory so as to equalize the deficiencies.” 

“ I am not heartless ! ” 

He sighed. 

“Hm I heartless ? ” 

“It looks like it,” said Frank, with unconscious 
humor ; “ since you don’t care for jne.” 

“But if I do care — in that other way — that — that 
platonic wajq Mr. Montgomery ? Don’t be unkind.” 

Then, of course, he took her hand, and vowed he 
would not be unkind to her for all the stars out of 
the firmament (and various other things that wouldn’t 
have been any use to him), and the conversation 
ended. 


14 


A GAMI^! AT PLATONICS. 


When his manner to her changed she had momentary 
doubts whether her sentiments were really as platonic 
as she supposed. She insisted, however, that she 
wanted him for her brother when he recurred to the 
subject, so perhaps she had decided that they were — 
and Frank poured out his repinings in solitude and 
bad verse for a couple of months. At the end of 
that time he received a shock. 

She told him that she was called home by some 
family affairs, lie detected a note of sadness in her 
tone ; it only needed her sadness to complete the blow 
dealt him by the news. 

“ Can 1 do anything ? ” he asked. 

“ JS'o, thank you, Mr. Montgomery,” she said. “ I 
am returning, as Miss Melton can fill my place.” 

She went a week later. He suggested he should 
kiss her a brotherly farewell. 

“ You do not Avish to be my brother,” she answered ; 
and there Avas eA^en reproach in her voice that he did 
not. 

Frank betook himself to the theatre and con- 
founded the memory of Plato, and the Avoman who 
had come doAvn to play Miss West’s part. 

That Avas in June. In September the tour Avas 
to conclude, and about a Aveek- prior to its termina- 
tion a letter came to him, to Miss Melton’s care. 
He tore it open hastily. It was not from Daisy, 
after all. A greater surprise aAvaited him. It Avas 
from the colonel. 


A GAME AT PLATONICS. 


15 


“ Dear Frank : I have been informed of the title 
of the paper in which I should find Mr. Montgomery’s 
address by a lady whose acquaintance is rather a 
recent honor. I suppose you have considered me 
very hard ; and it’s a fact that I have considered 
you very obstinate. Your decision with regard to 
the staoe cut me pretty deep, and I think you might 
have peased me, and trained for the Woolsack in- 
stead. All the same, come home, and we’ll cry quits. 
‘ Home’ brings me to a piece of news which will 
astonish, but I trust not grieve you. When you re- 
turn you will find a very charming stepmother wait- 
ing to give you welcome. Yes, Frank, I have married 
again, and I want my boy’s congratulations. I was 
confoundedly down in the mouth after your scoun- 
drelly desertion ; I met the lady quite lately while 
out of town for my health ; and by George, sir, I have 
‘ wooed and married,’ and with a dispatch worthy of 
Komeo himself. She is a good deal younger than I ; 
and seeing that your taste in muslin is inherited from 
myself, I presume 1 needn’t tell you that she isn’t an 
ogress. Will only add that I am sure you will hit it 
off together admirably. Send me a long letter, and 
let us have you back at an early date. 

‘‘ Ever your affectionate 

“ Father. 

“P.S. — I enclose notes, thinking a cheque might 
have its difficulty.” 

The bewilderment with which Frank Featherleigh 
read the lines had scarcely subsided when, a few 
days later, he was rattling away to the Twicken- 
ham house. “ The dear old governor re-married ! ” 
he kept repeating mentally ; it sounded like a joke. 

Gloaming lay upon the place when at last he 
sprang from the fly, and hurried up the familiar steps. 


16 


A GAME AT PLAT0NIGi3. 


With never a premonition of what was coming he 
gave the bell a hearty pull ; without an instinct at 
work to warn him of the discovery that lay in store, 
he answered the old servant’s words of greeting with 
a laugh, and pushed past him into the room. 

“ Governor ! ” 

“ Frank ! » 

He stood wringing the colonel’s hand on the 
threshold, and looking into his eager face. And, 
while he stood there a girl moved forward into the 
twilight — slowly, awkwardly ; speaking with nervous 
tones, and an embarrassed smile. And when she spoke 
he saw that she was Daisy. 

Then still he stood there ; for the life of him he 
could not move. It was his father who turned to 
her, not he. It was his father, who, caressingly 
throwing an arm about her shoulders, drew her 
forward, and responded to her overture with a half- 
whispered jest. 

Frank could do nothing. Without a word to either 
of them he was stonily staring, incapable of speech, 
when the door was opened quickly, and a stranger 
entered, with a welcome at once cordial and shy. 
She was a sweet, forty-year-old likeness of the girl, 
and his father said, “ Frank, you prodigal, this is the 
lady who has made me forget that I am fifty years 
old. Eleanor, this is our boy ! ” 

And after that there was chatter and laughter. 


A GAM^ AT FLATOmqS. 


17 


Frank recovered sufficiently from the mistake he had 
made to rally Daisy on her “ impudence” in leaving 
the Company to attend his father’s wedding with- 
out apprising him where she was going ; and she ex- 
patiated with wide-open eyes on the lack of connection 
between Mr. “ Montgomery,” the player, and Colonel 
Featherleigh’s son. Eleanor hoped he was not 
“angry” about the marriage; and the Colonel cried 
that if anybody had presented with such sisters 
at Frank’s age he thought he could have borne it 
very well. 

Frank bore it very well, too; it was Daisy who 
did not appear enthusiastic as time went by. He in- 
sisted on fraternal confidences : they left the stage, 
and he used to chaff her about her “conquests” and 
impart histories of his own heartburnings for Miss 
Jones and Miss Porter, and the fair Miss Smith. He 
said she should always be his favorite sister, and hear 
these things, which was affectionate. Daisy did not 
seem to be grateful for the privilege, nor enamored 
of the relationship she had desired so much. She 
told him one day slie thought Plato was a fraud. 
Then they dethroned him. 



AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION 









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AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


We are living in days when Lord Lytton’s “ Strange 
Story” is considered by many to be his greatest work. 
With many, alas! faith is dead. They reject inspired 
writings, or explain them away, and kindly dismiss 
them as exquisite and beautiful myths. On the other 
hand, they are ready to swallow wholesale impostures 
of the very grossest kind, provided only that they are 
wrapped in a scientific jargon. It is difficult for a 
sensible man to realize the fact that he is living in 
times when Mr. Slark, the medium, makes a larger 
income than most surgeons or physicians, however 
eminent. Still, however, curious things do sometimes 
actually happen. 

Mrs. Pennant was by universal consent a model 
wife. Captain Pennant, of the Guards, had married 
her for her money. He considered he had done a 
clever thing, and was actually not averse to being ral- 
lied about his nuptial coxvp. He had been “ put on” to 
this good thing by his brother-in-law, a colonel of 
Lancers, who had married Mrs. Pennant’s elder 
sister. 

Mrs. Pennant soon came to know the worst. She 
needed no spies or anonymous letters. Her husband 


22 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


seemed, if anything, to pride himself upon his own in- 
famy. One day, wretched beyond all description, 
the poor lady visited her doctor. Her nerves were 
strung to their highest pitch ; she was quivering with 
excitement. Dr. Marcus kindly, as if his patient 
were a child, placed his hand gently on her fore- 
head. 

“ You must compose yourself,” he said. “ I insist 
on your doing so. I will not be answerable for the 
consequences if you do not.” 

To his intense surprise, his patient, seated as she 
was in an easy-chair, closed her eyes and fell into a 
profound slumber. What was to be done ? The doc- 
tor summoned his assistant, and gave orders that a 
female domestic should watch the lady till she awoke. 
Then he began to consider the situation. 

His mind was soon made up. There was clearly 
something here beyond the range of his own philoso- 
phy. Could these charlatans be right after all ? It 
was impossible; and yet it is the first rule of science 
that there must be a reason for everything. Galvani 
noticed that when his wife cut off the legs of the frogs 
which she was preparing for dinner they twitched con- 
vulsively. He considered the matter, repeated the 
experiment under every variety of condition, dis- 
covered the galvanic battery, and thereby did almost 
as much to revolutionise the world as Galileo 
himself. 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION 


23 


Three or four hours went by. Dr. Marcus re- 
turned to the room and found Mrs. Pennant still 
asleep. In the presence of the maid-servant he made 
the ‘‘ reverse passes” that he had heard of as being 
])ractised by mesmerists. He hardl}^ knew what to 
expect, but, to his surprise, his patient opened her 
eyes and sat up. Her pulse had fallen to its natural 
beat ; her brow and hands were cool ; her eyes were 
clear and bright. 

“ I have been asleep,” she said, “ and I feel better.” 
Then she laughed like a schoolgirl, and added, 
naively, “ I declare, I am quite hungry.” 

The experiment was often repeated. Time after 
time Mrs. Pennant came to consult the doctor with 
her tale of sorrow. Time after time he gave her 
the relief she sought, and sent her to rest, to forget her 
sorrows in the lotus-land of sleep. 

One day Dr. Marcus received a telegram which 
admitted of no delay. The great Mr. Yanderdecken, 
the wealthiest man in all San Francisco, the Bonanza 
King, capable, if he chose, of buying up the 
Vanderbilt family, stock, lock and barrel, wanted him 
to come over at once to assist at a most difficult and 
critical operation. The fee offered was magnificent. 
The distinction was even more important in the 
doctor’s eyes. He summoned his assistant and 
factotum, hurriedly packed his portmanteau, and in 
a very few hours was in his cabin, forty miles at least 


24 


AN UNWELCOME RESUMRECTION, 


from land, and making his preparations for the 
night. 

In an instant there flashed across his mind the recol- 
lection that he had left Mrs. Pennant in his consult- 
ing-room in a mesmeric sleep, that no one could wake 
her up but himself, that she would be in all human 
probability declared dead, and that he would return 
to find that she had been buried alive. Then he 
recollected that his consulting-room had a peculiar 
lock. The door of itself shut with a snap, the snap 
locked it, and it could only be opened with a master 
key, which at that precise moment hung from his own 
watch chain. On this fact was the only room for 
hope. 

Clearly the one thing to be done the instant he 
landed was to telegraph and then to hurry back. 
But this would be a matter of weeks rather than of 
days. It was terrible ! 

He never slept. All day he paced the deck. By 
night, when the order came to extinguish lights, he lay 
in his bunk and counted the hours until the mornino*. 

O 

Nothing but downright dogged strength of will 
enabled him to keep the balance of his reason. New 
York was reached at last. He did not lose a minute, 
but at once telegraphed back to his housekeeper : 

“Mrs. Pennant is asleep in my consulting-room. 
Let no one touch her, go near her, or atteinpt to rouse 
her till I return. Home by next boat. There is no 
need for alarm.’' 


AN UNWELCOME REiSURREGTION 


25 


He also telegraphed to San Francisco stating that 
it was impossible for him to come, that he had reached 
New York, but that he had to return at once to 
England. Nor did he give any reason for this abrupt 
communication. Then he commenced to count the 
hours until his return. So eager was he, and so 
shaken were his nerves, that he would not risk 
remaining on shore. Having ‘engaged his cabin, he 
confined himself to it as closely as if he were under 
arrest. 

The vessel started at last. Then he trusted himself 
on deck, which he paced all day, until he was, with 
the other passengers, compelled to go below. Then 
he lay, as on the outward journey, sleepless in his 
cabin till the morning. So the hours passed till 
Liverpool was reached. From Liverpool he at once 
took the mail to London. 

His servants started as they saw him. His eyes 
were bloodshot, his face haggard, and his hair had 
actually grown grey. They fell away right and left 
as he strode through the hall to his consulting-room, 
opened the door with his key, and passed in. The 
door closed behind him, and they stood with great 
open eyes looking at one another. The housekeeper, 
who was a prudent woman, had implicitly obeyed the 
instructions contained in her master’s telegram — the 
contents of which, moreover, she had not communicated 
to a living soul. 


26 


AN UNWELCOME -RESURRECTION 


Mrs. Pennant lay on the couch as the doctor had 
left her. The first glance showed him that her 
features were colorless, her lips blue, and that round 
her eyes had gathered great heavy circles of an ashy, 
leaden tint. Dr. Marcus paused for a moment. She 
had now been for three weeks without food. This,, 
however, is not an extreme case, and his practised 
eye detected at once.that there were no symptoms of 
emaciation or wasting. He remembered the case, 
reported by Dr. Sloan, of a healthy man, aged sixty- 
five, who was locked up in a coal mine for twenty- 
three days without food or water, and who yet 
recovered. He remembered also that death from 
starvation is almost invariably preceded by convul- 
sions and delirium. But Mrs. Pennant was lying 
as he had left her, perfectly tranquil. Apparently 
she had not even moved or stirred. 

He took her hand, but it was cold as marble. He 
felt for the pulse, but failed to detect the slightest 
thread. Then he lifted the right hand, chafed the 
forearm between the wrist and the elbow, took.a lancet 
from the table, and touched a vein. For a moment 
the symptoms were absolutely negative. There then 
oozed from the incision the smallest drop of blood. * 
He touched it with his finger, and it was fluid. There 
was little doubt that, unless all science be a delusion, 
the circulation, however feeble, was still in existence. 
Men of science differ as to whether coagulation of the 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


27 


blood be the immediate cause of death or its concomi- 
tant symptom. But all are agreed that after coagula- 
tion of the blood it is impossible to restore the circula- 
tion and to bring back life. Here, clearly, the circula- 
tion could be restored, or might be. 

Hr. Marcus shouted for his assistant, and perempto- 
rily said, “ Pull off her boots, rub the soles of her feet, 
rub her hands ; ” and while these orders were being 
obeyed, without any symptoms of astonishment or 
surprise, he himself, concentrating all his strength of 
will into one great effort, deliberately, calmly, and 
slowly made the reverse passes. 

“ Wake ! ” he said, “ wake ! I order you to wake ! 
Wake ! ” But there was no response, and Dr. Marcus’s 
face grew paler still. Then he nerved himself for one 
supreme effort. 

“ Wake ! ” he cried, “ wake ! wake.” 

The pulse trembled under the fingers, the eyelids 
twitched, the pale lips moved. Then came a deep in- 
spiration of the chest ; the pulse quickened, the eyelids 
opened heavily and dreamily. But there was no film 
of death upon the eyes. The woman was awake 
again, awake and alive, but too weak to even make 
an effort at motion. 

In a little cabinet against the wall were simple 
drugs, which ought always to be at hand. Dr. Mar- 
cus hurriedly poured out some tincture of red lavender; 
mixed it with water, held it up, and almost forced it 


28 


AN UN WELCOME RESURRECTION 


through Mrs. Pennant’s teeth. Simple folk who live 
in the country ! flow little aware are you that the 
red lavender which you grow that you may perfume 
your muslin curtains and your draperies with it, is 
one of the most potent drugs known in the whole 
herbal! 

Mrs. Pennant sat on the edge of the couch and hur- 
riedly rearranged her dress. “ I must go,” she said, 
“ I must go at once. You shall see me or hear from 
me, but I must go now. I fancy I must have been 
asleep longer than I thought. ' My husband will be 
expecting me.” 

She passed out into the street, a cab was summoned 
for her, and she ordered the driver to take her home. 
She looked at her watch. It- had stopped. It was a 
three-day watch. Surely there must be some mistake. 
Strange, too, that she should feel so tired and weak. 
However, she must get home. 

At the corner of Belgrave Square she dismissed 
her cab. It was strange. There was a party at the 
house — a morning party of some kind. Broughams 
were waiting, footmen were standing about. What 
could it all mean ? 

She passed through the open door, stepped through 
the hall, and entered the drawing-room. The blinds 
had not been drawn up. The curtains still shut out 
the fresh light of the day. She heard loud laughter 
and noisy voices. The air was heavy ’and suffocat- 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


29 


ing with intolerable odors of hothouse flowers, of 
perfumes of tobacco and of wine. The table Avas 
crowded with guests, none of whom she knew. There 
Avere men in eA^ening dress. One of them, Avho Avas in 
the midst of a song, stopped as she entered, and a 
tumbler filled Avith champagne fell from his hand Avith 
a crash. The Avomen rose hurriedly to their feet and 
stared at each other Avith wondering eyes. The men 
remained seated Avith a solemn look of drunken grav- 
ity inexpressibly ludicrous had it not been so horri- 
ble. It Avas the entry of Circe, daughter of the great 
Sun- God, amid the herd of SAvine. 

Captain Pennant, his hands quivering, his features 
almost convulsed, his voice thick and unsteady, 
staggered to his feet, clutching at the table. On his 
right Avrist, arranged as a bracelet, Avas placed the 
locket and necklet of Mademoiselle Pacquita, of the 
Grand Cirque. His arm fell from that lady’s Avaist. 

“ My dear,” he stammered, “ wondered Avhere you 
Avere. Been sitting up for you. All friends here.” 
Then his legs gave Avay and he collapsed upon the 
floor. 

Then there was a stampede. The Avomen bustled 
out of the room, and somehoAv disappeared. The 
men hurried out into the hall, snatched up any hat 
that came first, and were off as quickly as they 
possibly could. 

“ A rum scene,” said one of them to the other. 


30 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


“Precious rum,” was the answer. “I’d heard 
she’d bolted, but it doesn’t look like it. I wonder if 
he’s been locking her up in a lunatic asylum ? ” 

“ He’s bad enough for anything, lie told me she’d 
committed suicide.” 

“ It’s a queer start,” was the laconic rei)ly. “ Hope 
I sha’n’t be mixed up in it, anyhow. You never know 
when you may be hauled into court as a witness. 
Here’s a cigar. Have you got a light ? ” 


Mrs. Pennant went hurriedly up the stairs to her 
own room. It was littered with feminine apparel, 
flowers faded in their circlets of stamped paper, soiled 
gloves, cigar stumps, and other such traces of an orgie. 
Then she took a key from her watch-chain, opened a 
small drawer in her escritoire, and collected a few 
relics and some money. A heavy travelling cloak 
and a bonnet Avith a thick black veil were in a Avard- 
robe. She hid herself in these, descended the stairs, 
and if not unnoticed, passed out, at any rate unchal- 
lenged, into the street, gliding unperceived through 
the busy crowd of foot-passengers. It Avas the very 
heart of the afternoon, in the midst of the fashion- 
able Avorld. 

That night Mrs. Pennant slept at an hotel Avhere 
she was Avell knoAvn. For years it had served her 
family as an occasional town house. The next 
morning she drove to her solicitors in Bedford Koav. 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


31 


The senior partner received her in his most courteous 
manner; heard her story, shook his head now and 
again Avith a gravity worthy of a Burleigh, and 
finally said: “My dear madam, it is not for me to 
undertake the entire responsibility of so grave a case. 
Take the letter to Dr. Tickell, of Bennett Street. He 
is a young man, but rising in his profession. I have 
instructed him to engage a nurse — who is also to be 
a competent lady’s maid — and to take you at once to 
Shanklin or Mentone, or Avherever he may advise for 
your benefit. I can clearly see — and you must be 
guided by me, for you are young enough to be my 
daughter — that you need rest. Meantime, I will 
devote my whole energies to your interests, which, 
after all, are simple. You need have no anxiety, as 
your settlements were drawn in this office. For the 
present, you want other help than I can give you.” 
And, to the surprise of his staff of clerks, the old 
man took Mrs. Pennant down the stairs on his arm, 
handed her into her hansom, and returned with a 
thoughtful face. 

“ Tell Mr. Jackson,” he said, as he re-entered, “ to 
bring up Mrs. Pennant’s boxes and all papers of any 
sort connected with her affairs ; and run round to our 
junior, Mr. Meddlicott, in Old Square, and fix a 
consultation for this evening, between six and nine. 
See the cashier, and take a cheque for his fee and 
clerks.” 


32 


AN UNWELCOME RESURRECTION. 


And then the old man returned to a mass of plans, 
showing sections of a mine in Wales, into which some 
water had broken from a disused mine, and drowned 
all the men who were actually at Avork. The death 
of the men was a mere incident. Five-and-twenty 
pounds a head Avould cover everything, even in these 
radical days, Avhen the law actually gives compensa- 
tion to workmen who are butchered through the 
negligence of their employer or his representative. 
But the stoppage of the works was another matter, 
for they formed the principal security in several 
heav}’- family settlements. It was a bone with plenty 
of meat upon it, and the old lawyer returned to his 
task of worrying it with a relish. 


BLACK AND WHITE 







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BLACK AND WHITE. 


There was a trace of excitement noticeable amons: 

o 

the loungers on the hotel steps. Conversation was 
suspended, and a close observer might have perceived 
that a sudden whisper ran from chair to chair as the 
victoria drew up. 

“ What is it ? ’’ asked a young man, who had only 
arrived that afternoon. 

“ The most beautiful woman in Brighton,” answered 
his companion ; “ watch her as she gets out ! ” 

He had underrated her; a painter would have 
declared she was a goddess. The imperious grace of 
the slender figure was alone sufficient to occasion re- 
mark ; the perfect features that crowned her made it 
adorable. Beneath straight dark brows, a pair of 
grey eyes gazed indifferently out of a face whose 
transparent fairness resembled the texture of the roses 
which she wore d V Americahie^ drooping loosely on 
her sables. Her loveliness was such that, on behold- 
ing her, one did not long to hear her speak ; curiosity 
as to her voice was forgotten in the mere worship of 
her presence. She might have been twenty-five, but 
one rarely thought of her years either. Before the 
bloom, the grace, the exquisite delicacy of this girl- 


36 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


woman, the average man sought primarily but per- 
mission to look. 

“ Who is she ? ’’ 

“She is a bride; her marriage possessed her of 
fabulous wealth ; and her husband is a negro.” 

“ A negro ? ” 

“ An African nigger, my friend — the son of a Zulu 
chief, who is reported to own more diamonds than 
would purchase Bond Street. A Croesus, a Monte 
Cristo! Oh, he was educated over here; distin- 
guished himself at Oxford ; and is a gentleman to the 
finger-tips. But they are black, black as his frizzy 
head ! You will see him with his wife at the table 
d’hote. What luck for one man, eh ? such a fortune, 
and a woman like that ! ” 

While they talked Mrs. Oomgazi was languidly as- 
cending the staircase. As her suite was on the first 
floor she did not find it necessary to make use of the 
lift. She opened the door and entered the vacant sit- 
ting-room, tossed her roses on to the table, and rang 
the bell for her maid. She was divested of her furs, 
and ordered tea to be served — still apparently bored. 
Then she passed into the bedroom, and discovered her 
husband lying prone on the carpet with his throat 
cut. 

After the blood had been wiped up — he had bled a 
good deal — and the consternation of the suicide was 
over, and the customary lie had been recorded by the 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


37 


jury, she went into the country to recover from the 
shock to her nerves. She had borne the flood of 
condolence and inquiry, the hideous publicity of the 
affair, .vith a courage that was really magnificent ; 
but the strain had been terrible ; and now she felt 
prostrate, as was natural in a woman widowed in such 
a fashion during her honeymoon. 

“ It was ghastly, it was heartrending,” she mur- 
mured brokenly to her relatives ; “ it was too cruelly 
inexplicable for words ! ” And on her second after- 
noon in the house she instructed the servants that 
she was out to everybody, and, drawing her arm- 
chair nearer to the fire, gave her attention to a book 
which she had taken from the dead man’s papers. It 
was labelled “ My Diary” and opened with a key he 
had been used to wear upon his watch chain. Her 
beautiful hands shook as she unfastened it, and forced 
herself to turn the final leaves. 

“She will marry me. I can scarcely realize my 
happiness as I write it ! Mamie, how I love you ; what 
accentuated agony my life has been since we met ! 
Shall I ever tell her this ? Will marriage -that thing 
I have always believed impossible for me— give me a 
companion in whom I shall be able to confide, a friend 
to whom I can pour out the misery that education 
lias made me suffer? Heaven knows; I doubt even 
while I hope ! Ho, it is false ; I do not doubt ; I 
shut my eyes and refuse to see ! She likes, but she 


38 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


does not love me. She forgets my race in moments ; 
I remind her of it every time I touch her hand. If I 
were poor, or if she were not, there would be no Mamie 
for me. What a fool I am ; I am preparing a hell 
for us both and I have not the strength to resist. I 
am buying her, buying her just as I should have 
bought wives in Zululand, if I had been reared in the 
country of my birth. Isn’t it loathsome to contem- 
plate? That girl — paying gold for her instead of 
cattle — it is the only difference ! But she will marry 
me ! Oh, God, let my eyes keep shut, preserve the 
weakness that closes them! I do not seek to see. 
Mamie has promised to be my wife ! ” 

‘‘ I have kissed her. I felt her shudder. I think 
she saw that I perceived its effect upon her, for she 
was very kind and tender afterwards. But her 
mother is more attentive to me than she. It is her 
mother who is responsible, she and the swarm of 
sisters. What a beast of a woman to persuade her 
child to do this thing — to sell her to a negro. Mamie ! 
And I — ? Oh, yes, my faithful conscience, I know, 
I know ! But I won’t listen to you, do you hear ? 
You may shriek, but I won’t listen. I shall be so 
good to her that I shall teach her to. love me. She 
will grow used to my color. What alarms her ? It 
is the strangeness. In time, in a year — two years — 
she will forget, she must forget ; it is not in nature 
that she should remember. The wedding day is 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


39 


fixed for the first of next month. She is more to me 
than heaven or earth, and I will say my prayers to 
her at her feet.’’ 


“ I asked her this morning if she was sure — if she 
had no wish to draw back. 

“ ‘ Mamie,’ I said, ‘ I don’t feel as if you have shown 
me your mind very clearly ; and I know I could woo 
you much better by letter. Are you quite certain ? ’ 

“ ‘ Certain ? ’ she repeated, tremulously. 

“ ‘ Certain that you don’t regret. That you aren’t — 
aren’t frightened, my own. Oh, my dearest, I am 
such a coward, so fond of you, that I am anxious to 
help you to set your instincts at defiance. Don’t 
do it ; be braver than I. Make me hear the truth 
whether I want to or not.’ 

‘‘ She hesitated a moment, and then she gave me 
her hand. ‘ I am pretending nothing,’ she answered ; 
‘ I have determined to do my duty as your wife.’ 

“ No word of tenderness ; no pressure in the cold, 
slim fingers that I held. 

“‘lam not demonstrative by disposition,’ she con- 
tinued, after a little pause ; ‘ and you, I’ve an idea, 
are hypersensitive. You are inclined to imagine the 
existence of what you dread. You fear I may be — 
what was your expression — “afraid,” and so you 
fancy I am so. That is really very foolish. I am 
hardly a girl any longer, you know. Most of the 


40 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


romance, the extravagant ideals of the “ teens,” I have 
outgrown. While their loss gives you less of the 
conventional courtship than you look for, console 
yourself by reflecting that it also argues less — 
less ’ 

“ ‘ I understand,’ I said, ‘ quite.’ I understood that 
she was lying. ‘ Have you then,’ I inquired, ‘ never 
cared for any man before me ? Have you never been 
in love, Mamie, as I am in love with you?’ 

“ ‘ Once,’ she replied in a low voice. 

“ ‘ And — forgive me, perhaps I pain you ? ’ 

“ ‘ It is past,’ she murmured, ‘ over. I am resolved 
never to think of it again.’ 

“ ‘ He is dead ? ’ 

“ ‘ The episode is dead : please don’t let us talk of 
it.’ 

“ I desisted as she begged. How long has it been 
dead I wonder ; was it the temptation of my wealth 
that buried it ? Oh, she is right, I harrow myself un- 
necessarily ! Only another fortnight, and then ” 


“We were married yesterday. My God, why was 
I born ! Why was she not honest in time, or why " 
couldn’t she conceal her horror to the end ! May no 
man ever suffer as I have suffered ; may she never 
suspect the torture that has wrung my soul ! It shall 
be as she wishes, but it were better had I died before 


BLACK AND WHITE. 


41 


we went to the altar-better for both of us. To what 
can she look forward, or can I ? To live with this 
woman, to see her daily, to yearn as I yearn, and to 
be divided by the wall of her abhorrence is to fore- 
taste the fires of the damned. To-day I have scarcely 
the courage to address her ; I shun her, and I can see 
it is a relief to her to be shunned.’’ 


“She is in love with that man still; I feel it! 
Half the repulsion I excite in her is due to her con- 
stancy to him. What a maniac I was to suppose she 
would ever grow used to me : her life is a nightmare 
that no sacrifice I make can decrease. I have ruined 
her peace, but I have spared her reason ! Oh, thank 
God, I have spared her reason. ‘ You will find me 
insane, you will find me insane’ — shall I ever get her 
cry out of my ears ! She might be more considerate, 
she might remember ! I have done all I can, 
except die. And I am tempted to do that ! If I had 
had a revolver I should have blown my brains out any 
day during the last week. There are moments when, 
with her gaze upon me, I feel mad, when it seems to 
me that death holds the only relief I can look for. 

“Then I could kiss her glove, and pull the trigger in 
despair. Mamie, my beloved, you will never know 
what you are doing to me. You push me nearer to 
suicide each time I catch your frightened eyes upon 
my face 1 • 


42 


BLACK AND WHITE, 


The diary came to an end with that ; and when she 
had finished reading Mrs. Oomgazi tore the papers 
from their covers, and pressed them, handful by hand- 
ful, into the blaze. 


f 


A LOVE STORY. 







#« . 

» 





A LOVE STORY. 


This is the narrative of a step taken by a man and 
a woman regardless of consequences, and from no 
other motive than love. That is why I have called it 
a love story. Let it be clearly understood that the 
man was poor. He had, as a matter of fact, a salary 
of three hundred a year; no accumulations — they 
could hardly be expected — and the girl was without 
any other prospect in life than that of a lucky mar- 
riage, which, like the marshal’s baton in the private’s 
knapsack, a pretty girl is always at liberty to cherish 
under a home-made hat. This prospect, which is the 
birthright of her sex, Effie Cunningham sacrificed 
when she married George — George with the three 
hundred a year and his sentence of death. 

They were standing, as is appropriate at the com- 
mencement of a love story, in a meadow. Consider- 
ately, it was summer, and George had just come down 
from town. Mrs. Cunningham had a place in Worth- 
ing, and, though young Fothergill had often felt that 
Hampstead would be preferable. Love laughs at train- 
fares. 

“Effie,” he began, and then paused, and looked 
away. 


46 


A LOVE STORY. 


She gazed at him apprehensively. He was pale 
habitually, but to-day his pallor was alarming. She 
knew he had bad news to communicate, though she 
could not guess its purport. 

“ Effie,” he said again, “ how much do you care for 
me 

“ You are in trouble,” she answered ; “ let me hear 
all about it — quick.” 

It was to be observed that she did not tell him how 
much she cared for him ; but then he knew as well as 
she, so that it was unnecessary. 

“ Yes,” he acknowledged, I am in great trouble — 
such trouble that I hardly know how to break it to 
you. I have been to a physician, Effie, and he says — 
he says I am not well.” 

Her eyes widened at him, and for an instant she did 
not speak. 

“ Hot serious ? ” she faltered at last. 

^^Yery serious, Effie. I — be brave, darling — I am 
not going to live.” 

It was horrible tidings for a man to have to give to 
hisj^^^^c^'^. He had been told that his lungs were 
affected — not one lung, not a ‘‘ little dull” — but both 
lungs, radically wrong! With care, with a scrupulous 
avoidance of nine-tenths of those things which make 
life worth having, it was possible he might last a 
year. 

He had never dissipated. There was no brilliant 


A LOVE STOUT. 


47 


period in his career for him to recall with self- 
reproach or with philosophy. His days had been the 
omnibus-jog-trot-to-the-bank-and-back days of the 
city clerk. They had been engaged — how long had 
they not been engaged, now ? She had first owned 
she was fond of him when he was earning a hundred 
a year, and living in a small back attic in Keppel 
Street, illumined by a paraffin lamp. Through the suc- 
cessive stages of a hundred and fifty, two hundred, 
and two hundred and fifty she had waited, and now 
at last his salary had touched the dizzy height of the 
three hundred which they had always determined 
should mean their marriage. 

One of the directors of the company was his uncle ; 
and this director was an intimate friend of the chair- 
man, and by his influence the three hundred a year 
had been secured. It needs great influence for a city 
clerk to secure three hundred a year — it was as much 
as the director drew for attending some of the board- 
meetings — and George esteemed himself a particu- 
larly fortunate young fellow. 

It was only a fortnight since the increase had been 
formally notified to him. He had despatched a tele- 
gram to Worthing forthwith, with “ Letter to follow” 
added, which ran the cost up to a shilling and a half- 
penny. On the ensuing Saturday he had slammed 
his desk, and sped in a hansom for the first available 
train. And then, out on the sands in the sunset, with 


48 


A LOVE STORY. 


the sea-breeze flushing the girPs cheeks, and blowing 
the mustiness of ledgers to oblivion, they had settled 
the morning that was to see them husband and 
wife. 

Why, why, when everything had looked so fair, had 
he not been content with the present, and left the 
future to take care of itself. Some misgiving — lauda- 
ble prudence, if you like — had prompted him to insure 
his life. Their income would be derived from hia 
appointment ; if anything had happened to him, Effio 
would be unprovided for. He had gone forth confix 
dent, exhilarated by his intention ; a few days latei 
he was a dazed and broken-hearted man. 

In the first few hours which succeeded the ghastly 
shock there had seemed to him nothing to do but to 
give her back her freedom, and to bid each other fare- 
well on the eve of their happiness. Then a new 
thought assailed him. He knew — it was not vanity — 
that, without him, life was no longer worth anything 
to her. If they married, he would leave her with 
nothing, except perhaps a child whom she would be 
unable to support ; but they might still know twelve 
months of happiness before he died. The temptation 
seized him, and fastened on him ; he wrestled with it, 
and it would not be gainsaid. It was reckless, it 
was mad; but it was what he had come to ask 
of her. 

Presently, when she was composed a little, he took 


A LOVE STORY. 


49 


her in his arms, and put it to her. “ I asked you how 
much you loved me,” he said ; “ do you love me well 
enough for that % ” 

Her face had grown as white as his own, and they 
looked steadfastly into each other’s eyes. “ Oh ! ” 
she moaned, “ it is cruel, it is frightful, after we have 
waited so long.” 

“ Yes,” he answered, “ it is frightful. Still, we need 
not lose everything, unless you decide that it must he 
so. The years together that we pictured we can never 
have ; still, we can have one year. I say nothing of 
the ecstasy that it would be to me, because the cost 
must be paid by you. But think what that year may 
hold ! We can condense into it the love that was to 
have extended over our lives.” He quoted a phrase 
of Robert Browning’s that was very apropos. “ W e 
can put the thought of the future away from us, and 
only remember that we are together — that we are 
‘one.’” He broke his word, and did urge what it 
would mean to himself: “EtRe, I am a wretched, 
God-forsaken man; give me twelve months’ joy 
before I die ! ” 

AYhat could she do? What would any girl so 
situated have done ? She lifted her lips to him, and 
vowed that she would make him as happy as she 
could, and that he was more to her than reason, or 
duty, or anything else. 

“ But my mother must be spared the anxiety,” she 
said ; “ she must not know.” 


60 


A LOVE STORY. 


“ Nobody need know,” he replied. “ God bless you, 
dearest ! ” 

They were married three weeks later, on the date 
that had been fixed. 

George Fothergill applied for a fortnight’s leave of 
absence, and, inasmuch as he designed it for a honey- 
moon, it was granted to him. It is not known 
whether a board meeting was held to consider the 
application, but it is irregular and revolutionary for 
city clerks to petition for fortnights’ leave of absence 
at odd times, and it was generally felt that he was 
being treated with exceeding generosity. There were 
even sneers among the staff at the “ friends at court ” 
who made such things possible in offices. 

They went to the Isle of Wight; and then came 
back, and took up their residence in a little villa in 
Highbury. 

In the weeks which followed George Fothergill 
felt as light-hearted as he had promised himself to be. 
The realization of his cherished hopes, the tenderness 
of the wife for Avhom he had waited so long, left no 
room in his mind for anticipation or for regret ; and 
here, at the commencement, his sentence was forgotten 
in the bridegroom’s bliss. 

With the woman, however, it was otherwise. To 
her there was something painful in their joy itself, 
threatened, as it was, by the fact that every day drew 
closer to divide them. In the shadow of the advanc- 


A LOVE STOMY. 


61 


mg spectre, their very caresses seemed pathetic, and 
often she would start from her sleep with a fright- 
ened cry, to shudder in the stillness, to wonder if 
he still lived. 

Misgivings returned to George, too, by degrees; 
and it was pitiable to see their endeavors to hide 
their terror from each other. So far, no alteration 
in his condition was shown ; but both knew how swift 
a change a London winter works in a consumptive, and 
on the first IS’ovember morning when they break- 
fasted by gaslight, and the street outside was black, 
she looked at him with haggard eyes. 

She broke' down on that morning; the farce that 
they were playing for each other’s benefit could no 
longer be maintained. She clung about him in tears 
and misery : bewailing that he could not go away — 
to Yentnor, to Torquay, somewhere where the 
dreaded winter might be avoided. Why was she so 
helpless! Other women were able to bring their 
husbands dowries. She could do nothing but see him 
die. 

It was when the Christmas holidays were approach- 
ing that George took cold— a slight cold at the 
beginning, he said it was nothing. But it went 
to the chest, and he developed a backing cough 
which kept him awake for half the night, 
restless and exhausted. Effie’s anxiety had reached 
a height which was almost a physical ill. She 


52 


A LOVE STORY. 


used to lie beside him blanched with fear; rising 
at intervals to heap more coals on the fire, to make 
another poultice, to pour out his mixture, to sustain 
him with encouragement she could not feel. All that 
a loving woman could do to keep the enemy at bay 
she did ; and at last the crisis was tided over, and 
once again he was (in appearance at least) cheerful 
and well. Then the spring broke, and now her gaze 
scarcely left his face, for she understood, though the 
signal was not sounded, that the limit of their happi- 
ness was drawing near. April merged into May, and 
June came — the month that would hold the only anni- 
versary of their wedding-day which both would see. 
The bolt was withheld in June, but, as it happened, it 
was then that they had their first tiff. It was not 
serious, but it was ill-timed, and they were reconciled 
almost immediately. 

We must not have any disagreement now, Effie,” 
said George, sadly. “ Your last memoiy of me must 
be a gentle one.” 

“George,” she sobbed, “don’t speak so!” There 
are occasoins when a man’s kindness hurts a woman 
more than his anger. 

June crept into July without events, excepting that 
they chanced to quarrel rather seriously in July. 
Both had bad tempers, though in view of the tension 
they were undergoing each of them had certainly 
an excuse. Honestly, I do not know when it first 


A LOVE STOUT. 


53 


dawned upon them that George stood as good a 
chance as anybody of living to three-score-and-ten ; 
but I do know that he frequently has a cold to-day, 
and that he only gets one poultice now, which is pre- 
pared for him by the cook. More than ten years have 
passed since Effie used to lie awake in the night, and 
tremble, and they have had a good many “ disagree- 
ments ” in the meanwhile. George still does not die ; 
and it is whispered (only people tell such lies) that 
Mrs. Fothergill would not be wholly inconsolable if 
he did. 










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THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 



THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


SCENE : DTCtwing-Toom engaged hy Mdlle. Finette, 
dameuse, in the Regent Hotels Piccadilly. Made- 
moiselle, in expensive deshabille^ is smoking a 
cigarette by the , fii^e. A man of uncertain age., 
and seedy appearance, steps from the lift to the 
landing, and knocks at the door, which is opened by 
maid. 

Finette. 

If that is the reporter returned, let him come in 
now, and then you can go away. 

Reporter {entering). 

I hope I am not troubling you, mademoiselle? I 
represent The Echoes of the Universe, and we should 
be glad to hear how London strikes you, and what 
you think of an English audience. We propose to 
illustrate 

Finette. 

I have been in London before, but then I — Good 
Lord, Dick Harcourt ! 

Reporter. 

You know my — Millie, great Gad! 

Finette {p^ho has turned very white under her powder). 


58 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


So, Captain Harcourt, you and I meet again ! After 
— how long, let me see ? 

Eeporter {awTcwardly^ and looking down at his boots^ 
which need repairing). 

It must be fourteen — fifteen years. The world is 
small, by Jove ! 

Finette. 

There’s room enough in it to get on, though, you see 
— and to sink, as you’ve apparently found out. • 
Eeporter. 

You needn’t sneer. Yes, my luck has been rough, 
devilish rough. Things have gone from bad to worse 
with me. Well (he makes an attempt at dignity), I am 
a literary man ; I — er — “ interview ” celebrities ; I live 
by my pen. 

Finette. 

And you have come to interview little Millie Smith 
whom you took out of a restaurant, and promised to 
marry, and found simple enough to believe you. You 
were a swell then, Harcourt — an officer in the ninety- 
somethingth — and it was out of the question to keep 
your word to a girl like me, wasn’t it ? 

Eeporter. 

There doesn’t seem much good in throwing it all up 
again, Millie, does there ? 

Finette. 

It would have been disgracing yourself to marry me, 
only I was such a fool I couldn’t see it. But you un- 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


59 


derstood it, of course ; and you preserved your honour. 
You sent me a “tenner” in a note without an address, 
and wished me good fortune and good-bye. I think 
you said something about having “ dropped a pot over 
the Cesarowitch ,” though a “ tenner ” was handsome, 
I’m sure. 

Keporter. 

I was stone-broke ; I couldn’t help myself. 

Finette. 

I’m not grumbling — about the “ tenner ! ” 1 have 
had “ good fortune,” of a kind. How are you f You 
are not in the ninety-somethingth any more, I fancy. 
Why not ? 

Keporter. 

I left the Service. There were reasons 

Finette. 

I saw ’em hinted in a paper. They weren’t very 
pleasant reasons, were they i 

Reporter. 

You are making a handsome living, and I’ve gone 
under. I don’t know why you’re so bitter. I sent in 
my papers. The best of men may send in his papers, 
I suppose. 

Finette. 

Why, certainly ! You were engaged to be married 
at that time, too, Harcourt, I believe. The marriage 
didn’t come off ? 

Reporter {fingering his napless hat). 

H — no, it didn’t come off. 


60 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


F INETTE. 

You left the Army, and the lady left you. But 
these things may happen to the best of men, as you 
say. What did you do after that? You are not as 
talkative as you used to be. 

Reporter. 

I was on the Continent for a while. There 
were 

Finette. 

More reasons, I understand ! Why don’t you write 
your autobiography now that you are a “ literary 
man ” — you’ve had lots of experience ! Once, to my 
knowledge, you had a girl head over heels in love with 
you ; only a girl who sold flowers in a restaurant, it is 
true, but she was fond of you, for a fact! Well, after 
the “ reasons ” had blown over, you had a club up 
West, didn’t you — a proprietary club, where they 
played pretty high ? 

Reporter. 

I have no cause to conceal it ; I was proprietor of 
the Octave ” for twelve months. I — er — resigned. 
I voluntarily resigned. Possibly you knew it — you 
seem to know a great deal ! 

Finette. 

Yes, I did see it mentioned. There was a scandal 
in the “ Octave ” wasn’t there ? Somebody made a 
fuss, and there was an accusation of foul play, and a 
talk of a prosecution against the proprietor and two of 
the members ? 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


61 


KeI’ORTER. 

There was a malicious, an infamous lie whispered ; 
and, as a gentleman, I preferred retiring to accepting 
the apology. 

Finette. 

So natural; you were always great at retiring. 
And now you report for The Echoes of the Universe. 
Does it pay you well ? 

Keporter. 

It does not, in point of fact, afford a very substan- 
tial income. But everything is relative. 

F INETTE. 

Yon used to spend more in cigars in the old days; 
and yet they say honesty is the best policy. The only 
thing is you worked the other line out before you 
tried this ! Perhaps the disgrace of keeping your oath 
to me would have been more profitable after all ! 

Keporter {in a sudden hurst). 

It’s been a wretched, down-hill life, from first to 
last ! For God’s sake, don’t taunt me, Millie ; there are 
times when I could cut my throat. 

(Finette looks away and lights another cigarettd). 

Finette. 

Will you smoke ? 

Keporter. 

Thanks ! I haven’t had a smoke to-day. 

Finette. 


Too busy ? 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR, 


G2 


Reporter. 

'No tobacco. 

Finette {startled). 

Poor devil — have you come to that ? 

{He smokes with a fierceness suggestive of a breakfast 
that was not^ and for a moment or two neither sgpeaks). 

Reporter {huskily). 

Tell me something about yourself, if you will, Millie ! 
If I can fill a column about you it’ll be a sovereign in 
my pocket. I may say you’re not French ? 

Finette. 

Oh, yes, you can say that. Say I’m American or — 
or anything but English. They won’t like me so much 
if I’m English, you see. 

Reporter. 

And your salary ; what’s that? 

Finette. 

I’ve signed a three months’ contract at sixty pounds 
a week, and then I’m going to Berlin and Paris at 
eighty. 

Reporter. 

Merciful Heaven ! And if it hadn’t been for me 

* Finette. 

I might still have been selling buttonholes ” in the 
restaurant. Yes, Dick Harcourt, you did a lot for me 
without meaning it ; you put me on the road to ^7Z-fame 
and fortune. And it happened so long ago ; and I’m 
such a long way removed from that good little girl 


THE FORTUNE OF WAR. 


63 


who trusted you, and would have made you a faithful 
wife, that I am even a trifle grateful to you for it. 
We are neither of us respectable, but men need capital 
to work dishonestly, and women don’t. You have 
sunk, and 1 have risen ! And if a reproach for what 
you did were needed, you couldn’t have a sharper one 
than to hear me say I can feel grateful to you ! It 
means that everything I was, was killed by you — that 
I owe you an experience of the world that has left me 
without softness, or shame, or conscience. You can’t 
realise that it’s a drawback, I dare say ; and you needn’t 
put this in the “ interview.” If you wait a moment 
I’ll show you my costumes. 

(She goes into the adjoining room^ and returns with 
some folded notes in her hand). 

Finette. 

The costumes are at the theatre, I forgot! But 
(she shps the packet into hi^ pocket) get some cigars 
when you go away, and a good dinner. 

Reporter (hoarsely^ throwing his arm round her). 

God bless you, Millie 1 

Finette. 

Sh ! don’t kiss me. Good-bye. It is a drawbac. 
Dick, all the same 1 


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FESTINA LENTE. 



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FESTINA LENTE. 


FTom Horatio Yandeleur, Theatre Boyal^ Bolton^ to 
Miss Yiva Yandeleur, Prince of Walei Theatre^ 
Greenwich, 


“September 6th, 1892. 

“My Dear Daughter: I should have replied to 
your letter before, but I have come out with such a 
fool of an acting-manager, and have accordingly a 
deuce of a lot to see to. The idiot can’t count a house 
within a five-pound note — I give you my word ! 

“ I see by the Era you are at Greenwich this week, 
so conclude the engagement you had in view came 
off all right. It would be a pity, by Jove, if Horatio 
Yandeleur’s daughter could not get shopped. With 
the experience you had with me, and the honoured 
name you bear, you ought to be able to state your 
own terms by this time — and get them. 

“ You speak of a Mr. Harold Passinger being intro- 
duced to you. Is he the son of the Manchester Sir 
Joseph Passinger? I read the other day of the old 
man having lent a few pictures ‘ from his priceless 
collection’ to an exhibition somewhere. If I am right 
in the parentage, keep the young fellow up to the 
mark. ‘ Lady Passinger ’ sounds very well, and I fear 


68 


FESTINA LENTE. 


you will never rise to the heights of your old dad in 
the profession. A man with ‘ a priceless collection ’ 
of pictures would make an A1 father-in-law. ‘ What 
larks!’ I enclose a list of my dates; so keep me 
posted, like a good little girl, and, if there is anything 
in it, rely on the felicitations of 

“ Your affectionate guv’nor, 

“Horatio Yandeleur. 

“ P. S. In Richelieu^ on Monday night, the house 
rose at me — it was an ovation. You might mention 
the fact casually to the local management.” 

From Miss Yiv a Y andeleur. Theatre Royal, Brighton, 

to Horatio Yandeleur, Esq., Theatre Royal, Bolton. 

“ September 12th, 1892. 

“My Dear Dad: Yes, Mr. Passinger is Sir Joseph 
Passinger’s son. Thanks for the information I Hadn’t 
an idea of it myself — in fact, such is my ignorance, I 
didn’t know there was a Sir Joseph Passinger. Of 
course, I could see the fellow was a swell ; but his 
position was a sealed book. 

“ I made sure of the matter this morning when he 
chanced to mention his father. I said: ‘Your father 
is the gentleman who lent those beautiful pictures the 
other day, isn’t he ? ’ 

“ He said, ‘ Sir Joseph Passinger, yes ! ’ and seemed 
surprised I had not known. 

“ He is very, very fond of me, and is staying down 


FESTINA LENTE. 


69 


here for no other reason than to go in front at night, 
and meet me on the front in the morning. The two 
‘fronts’ were accidental, and not a joke, but you may 
take them for a. pun if you think them funny ! 

“He asked me to dinner at a hotel yesterday, and 
I explained how wrong it would be for me to dine 
with him without a chaperon! (Do you spell ‘chap- 
eron’ with an ‘ e ’ at the end, or not ? Never mind.) 
He answered that he would be only too delighted to 
invite the whole company if he got my society in; 
and I compromised with a woman I owe 10 s. to — who 
elfaced herself after the champagne in a manner be- 
yond praise. He is really delightfully innocent and 
simple, and I feel that he only hesitates to ask me to 
marry him because he hasn’t got the pluck. You may 
not believe it, but I like him too. There is a freshness 
about him that takes me wonderfully. He looks at 
me with his big blue eyes as if I were a goddess in a 
petticoat. His father has spoilt him from his birth, 
he says, and never denied him anything. Perhaps he 
wouldn’t deny him his blessing if he married Yiva 1 
We stay here a fortnight — if anything happens will let 
you know. Your loving daughter, 

“Y. 

“ P. -S. A basket of flowers has just been sent to 
my lodgings. Would rather have had them handed 
over the floats, but, of course, he has never been in 
love with an actress before ! ” 


70 


FE8TINA LENTE. 


From Miss Yiva Yandeleur, Brighton^ to Horatio 
Yandeleor, Esq., Theatre Boyal, Oldham, 

“ September ISth, 1892. 

“My Eespected Governor: The die is cast, and 
sound a chord in the orchestra! Harold proposed 
this afternoon. He had suggested the Chain Pier, and 
I felt it coming ! Nobody was there — we had it to 
ourselves. I looked very nice; the wind wasn’t too 
emphatic, but stirred me (you know the kind of 
thing) very becomingly. We said something about 
the sea — not that it interested either of us, and I 
forget what — but there it was, not to be overlooked, 
and we made a remark about it. After that he 
touched my hand — I can’t say ‘ took’ it, he fluttered 
about it — and then he gasped, ‘Yiva, oh, Yiva, I love 
you.’ 

“There was a pause — a real Macready pause. I 
murmured in confusion : ‘ Mr. Passinger, how am I 

to take this ? ’ 

“ ‘ Take it % Can you take it in any way but one % ’ 

“‘lam an artist, and you — ^your father will never 
consent 1 ’ 

“ ‘ The governor would give me the moon if he had 
it!’ 

“ ‘ Harold, you are serious ? ’ 

“ ‘ Yiva ! ’ — embrace! — curtain ! 

“ Isn’t it pretty ? Doesn’t the domestic drama ap- 
peal to you ? For myself I am wild with delight. I 


FESTINA LBNTE. 


n 


shall be Lady Passinger one day, and take a box at 
your ‘ Ben.’ I shall be Lady Passinger, and have it 
all my own way. I shall be Lady Passinger — and 
my father, oh, my father, how I will dress the part 
when I get it! Your radiant daughter, Yi.” 

From Miss Yiva Yandeleur, Brighton^ to Horatio 
Yandeleur, Esq., Theatre Boyal^ Oldham. 

“ September 19th, 1892. 

It is a hideous error ; I could cry with shame and 
disappointment. I might have known! Why, oh 
why, didn’t you write to me Sir Joseph was too old 
for this to be the eldest son % Harold told me this 
morning that at home they always call him ‘ Baby.’ 
I said it suited him. He looked at me with his idiotic 
eyes, and said : ‘ Do you think so % They call it 
me at home because I am the youngest. The 
‘youngest!’ Not even the younger — the youngest! 
I turned faint and was speechless. I thought I should 
have swooned. I couldn’t answer him. He asked me 
if I was ill. I murmured something about the heat. 
There was a cutting east wind, and he must have 
thought me delirious. But it doesn’t matter — I shall 
never meet him again. ‘ Baby ’ was a very nice boy 
with a title pending; but with a few hundreds a 
year — even if the old man should be as tractable as 
believed— he does not suit Yiva. The discovery has 
shattered me completely ; I am crushed ! 

“ Your miserable daughter, 

“ Yiva Yandeleur.” 


72 


FE8TINA LENTE. 


From Harold Passinqer, Guards' Cluh^ Pall Mall^ 
to Miss Yiva Yandeleur, No. 2J, Pettiffer Place., 
Brighton. 

“ September 20th, 1892. 

“My Dear Miss Yandeleur: Your very interest- 
ing letter received. I will refrain from asking you 
for a fuller explanation. Woman is proverbially 
capricious, and I cannot feel it would be very dignified 
on my part to question or to plead. My only object 
in writing is to relieve your apparent terror that I 
shall attempt to see you any more. Believe me, I 
shall do nothing of the kind. 

“ I remain, yours truly, 

“Harold Passinger.’’ 

Telegram from Horatio Yandeleur, Oldham, to Miss 
Yiva Yandeleur, Brighton. 

“ September 20th, 1892. 

“ For Heaven’s sake, do nothing rash I The elder 
children are all girls ! ” 


A CAREFUL MOTHER 


I 



A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


From Mrs. St. Evremond, 3, Pandora Poad^ 
Shepherd’s Bicsh^ to Arthur Prius, Esq., Barrister 
at-law^ Middle Temple, 

‘‘July 1st, 1889. 

“ Dear Mr. Prius : My dear child has acquainted 
me with your very flattering proposal, and I am 
grieved to the heart that I cannot say to you, ‘Take 
her, and be happy.’ Had I foreseen the danger of 
your valued friendship for her ripening into love, I 
should have told you earlier what it becomes my 
melancholy duty to sa}^ to you now — your career 
is an insuperable objection to the marriage. She can 
never be the wife of a barrister. 

“ Of course I am aware that it is exceptional for an 
actress’s mother to refuse her blessing on grounds like 
these — I know that it is my little Nellie’s profession, 
and not your own, which is more usually esteemed an 
obstacle — but when you have heard my explanation 
you will admit its force, and exonerate me, I am sure, 
from any suspicion of coldness or indifference. 

“ 1 am hound hy a death-hed oath. 

When I niarried my late husband, he, like your- 


% 


A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


self, was at the Bar. I was an unsophisticated girl at 
the time (in appearance much what my Nellie is to- 
day) but while she, as a popular ingenue is in receipt 
of a substantial income, I was penniless, and dependent 
on his support. 

He had no influence ; his struggles were pitiful ! 

“I will not weary you with the tale of the misery 
we endured. His talent, given no chance to display 
itself, was, I have often thought, a misfortune rather 
than a boon. He, who should have taken silk at 
thirty, and risen to the Bench at forty-five, was 
forced to toil far into the night in order to earn a 
guinea-fee. Conscious of his ability, and oppressed 
by the sight of the wretchedness he had inflicted on 
the wife he loved, and the daughter who had sprung 
from the union, he lost spirit and health. Morose 
and disappointed, his last illness came almost as a 
release ; but before he died he made me take a solemn 
vow. It was that his child should never he given to a 
memher of the legal lyrofession. You may reply that 
you are succeeding ; that your means are sufficient 
for a young couple’s wants. That does not free me 
from my sacred undertaking ! Mr. Prius, it can never 
be. And I trust to you (I appeal to your good-feeling, 
and your honor) to abstain from seeing my little 
Nellie any more. 

‘‘With kind regards, and sincere regress, 

“I remain, very truly yours, 

“ Mathilda St. Evremond.” 


A CAMBFl/I. MOTHER. 


77 


Fmm Mrs. St. Evremond, 3, Pandora Road^ Shepherd's 
Rush, to Capt. Maurice Fairbairn, lllB, Jer- 
myn Street.^ W. 


“ July 1st, 1890. 

“ Dear Captain Fairbairn : I have just learnt from 
my child of the honor of your proposal, and let me 
say at once that I know no man to whom I would 
more gladly confide the happiness of her life. I am 
the more anxious that you should believe this assur- 
ance because I am compelled to tell you she can never 
be your wife, and I wish you to understand that I am 
helpless in the matter. 

I am hound hy a death-hed oath ! 

“ Let me explain ; When I married my late hus- 
band, he, like you, was in the army. A young man, 
and a young unsophisticated girl, we fell in love at a 
County Ball, and wedded without a thought of conse- 
quences. He was handsome, popular, and practically 
penniless, and it was not long before I discovered also 
that he was deeply m debt. 

“ His father, who idolized him, freed him from his 
embarrassment — for the second time, I heard; but 
with this last effort the old man’s powers of assistance 
came to an end, and in a year there were embarrass- 
ments again. 

“ I will not detail the history of my husband’s diffi- 
culties— the history of a young fellow placed in an 
expensive regiment and tempted to extravagance by 


78 


A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


the example of bosom-friends, whose position made 
their companionship a curse. I will only say that in 
his last years, disgraced and broken-hearted, it was to 
liis mistaken choice of a profession that he always 
attributed his ruin ; and before he died he called me 
to him, and bound me by a formal vow. It was that^ 
when his child was marriageable she should never be 
given to a military man. 

“ I shall always keep that sacred pledge I gave in 
the chamber of death (I feel that nothing can absolve 
me from it) and it is my painful duty to beg you not 
to approach my little ^Nellie again. Sympathise with 
me in my distress, Capt. Fairbairn, and 

“ Believe me, sorrowfully yours, 

‘‘ Mathilda St. Evremond.” 

From Mrs. St. Evermond, 3, Pandora Road., Shepherd^ s 
Bush., to Harley Haresfoot, Esq., Corinthian 
Theatre, Piccadilly. 

“July 1st, 1891. 

“ Dear Mr. Haresfoot : My child informs me you 
proposed to her in the omnibus last night, and that 
you are anxious to marry each other without delay. I 
am compelled to tell you that your vocation makes it 
impossible. She can never be the wife of an actor. 

“ Since my little Nellie is in the profession, too, this 
may astonish you, but I am speaking in accordance 
with her poor father’s wish. 

“ When I married my late husband he, like yourself, 


A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


79 


was on the stage. Ours was not a happy union, I con- 
fess it frankly, yet we loved each other at the begin- 
ning dearly enough. 

“ Dependent upon a precarious profession, we were 
forced to take what offers we could get — to accept 
separate engagements; to live apart: one inthe!N;orth 
when the other was in the South ; one wandering East 
when the other was travelling W est. If we encountered 
each other at a railway station occasionally, we were 
fortunate. 

“ That way we learnt to do without each other, and 
coldness began. 

“Before he died we were reconciled, but we had 
both learnt from experience a bitter lesson. On the 
morning of his death he signed me to approach and 
made me swear to protect my 1^61116 from my own un- 
happiness. I swore it in his own words. They were 
that she should never marry an actor. 

“You will see that, bound by a death-bed oath, I 
have no alternative but to refuse my consent to your 
suit ; but, with sincere regards, I am, 

“Always your friend, 

“Mathilda St. Eveemond.” 

From Charles Copthall, Esq., 999, Throgmorton 
St/reet, to Miss Nellie St. Evremond, Folly 
Theatre. Strand, 

“July 1st, 1892. 

“My Darlino Nell: I see your misgiving had 


80 


A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


foundation : for this morning’s post brought me a 
polite note from your worthy parent signifying that 
she can never consent to our marriage. 

“ ^^^ow, my sweetest girl, this seems to me awfully 
hard lines! The fact that your poor father was a 
broker, and went smash is, so far as I can see, no 
earthly reason why you should not make me happy, 
or why I should not make you a good husband. 
Moreover, from what you say, your mother appears 
to have objected to every offer you have ever had. I 
can’t say I am sorry she did so — if she hadn’t, you 
wouldn’t be free — but the fact remains that she refuses 
you to every one, and the inference is as clear as the 
noonday sun — out of London. 

“You draw eight pounds a week, and you 
admit to being twenty-five. Yet she treats you like 
a child ; pockets your salary. : and allows you out of 
it a beggarly ten-shillings for chiffons and ’bus fares. 
How long will you permit such a rascally state of 
things to continue ? You say you are sure she will 
never give you to me — I dare say not ; she finds you 
much too valuable to part with ! Be courageous, and 
defy her refusal ! I love you with my whole heart, 
and I will not see your life wasted in this fashion. 

“If you wear the accompanying flowers in the 
second act to-night, I shall understand that Mrs. St. 
Evremond is not coming to fetch you, and I shall be 
at the stage door when you leave. 

“ Ever your devoted Charlie.” 


A CAREFUL MOTHER. 


81 


From Miss Lydia Copthall, 49A, Penibrldge Siiuare^ 
TF!, to Miss Augusta Gushek, 2, The Grove, Ken- 
sington. 


“ July 8th, 1892. 

“ My Dearest Gussie : I am writing to you in 
despair. It will be the veriest line, but I should hate 
for you to learn the awful intelligence from any one 
but me. Charlie is married ! You know what I 
have always hoped— my brother and my bosom friend ? 
But the dream is over ; indeed he has shown that he 
was never worthy of you ! 

“ He has married Nellie St. Evremond, the actress. 
Mamma is distracted, and I — well, you may picture 
me ! He ran away with her (not mamma — the actress) 
and now has actually the effrontery to say he is 
happy. 

“Do come and have tea to-morrow, and let us 
mingle our tears. 

“ Yours quite brokenly, 

“ Lydia.’’ 

“ P.S. The character of the bride may be imagined 
from the fact that her own mother cuts her in the 
street ! 






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MARIAN GRAY, SPINSTER. 


It is so long since this incident happened that I can- 
not believe that anybody’s feelings can be hurt by its 
narration. Indeed it is only recently that I am in a 
position to narrate it ; for much of it, dealing as it does 
with others’ actions, and others’ minds, could only be 
known to me in one way. I mean that it has neces- 
sarily been related to me by the persons themselves. 
When you have finished reading you will quite under- 
stand that they were not likely to tell me until years 
had passed. 

I am an old woman now, rather a solitary woman, 
if the truth be owned, for, though I have my birds and 
my books, there are hours when I care for neither, 
and, as I have very little to bequeath, not many peo- 
ple come to see me. I stand, I say, much nearer to 
my coffin than my cradle, but my memory is still good, 
and when I was young I knew Harry Armytage very 
well, so that you may depend upon it I speak with 
authority. On second thoughts, however, an old 
woman being tedious company, I will not obtrude my- 
self on your attention. Like the modest fairy who 
summons the harlequinade, but who, if ruled to ap- 


86 


MARIAN dRAY, SPINSTER. 


pear in it herself, does so in another guise, I will wave 
my wand, and retire to change my gown. 

Harry Armytage was the son of a man who found 
the Bar a very undesirable career for the support of a 
wife and two children. It is quite certain that, what- 
ever Harry had been, he would never have become a 
barrister. As it was, he early displayed a leaning 
towards the profession of letters, and after much 
struggling, and many disappointments, he began to 
make a living by his pen. Let it be understood that 1 
use the terra “ living ” in the most literal sense, and 
that I do not mean that he was earning three or four 
hundred a year. 

While Harry was turning out “ copy,” and eating 
out his heart, a girl was serving her apprenticeship to 
the stage. And by one of those affinities which gen- 
erally attract a man with nothing to a girl with less, 
they met, and fell in love. 

Both being young, and neither abnormally wise, 
they confessed their love, and became engaged. Mar- 
riage looked pretty nearly as distant as a carriage-and- 
pair with their monogram on it, but, though I treat 
the matter lightly, there is not a shadow of doubt in 
my mind that they cared for each other very deeply 
indeed, and both of them were satisfied to wait. 

They continued to wait, without any improvement 
occurring in their circumstances, for three years, and 
then Harry began to talk of “ six or nine months.” 


MARIAN GRAY, SPINSTER. 


87 


He commenced to see his way, and Marian, who would 
have been delighted to live in two rooms with him, 
said little prayers of joy and thanksgiving on her 
knees. 

She had signed a contract with some third-rate 
dramatic company for a rather lengthy tour in the 
United States, and they calculated that when she 
returned to England their wedding might take place. 

The day before she sailed he went to say “ good-bye ” 
to her. She told him to be brave, and not to mind the 
separation. She said she would write him every detail 
of her life, and after that she cried, and exclaimed 
“ how foolish ’’ she was, and he put his arms round 
her, and, to cheer themselves up, they painted pictures 
of what the future held in store. 

“ And it won’t be so very long, really ! ” she mur- 
mured, drying her eyes. “ Let us send each other 
good long letters, and it will seem shorter still ! Don’t 
be a silly boy, and look wretched, Harry — because 
I don’t mind telling you that I feel very miserable 
myself.” 

“ When shall I hear from you first ? ” he asked. 

She meditated. 

“ Queenstown first of all, of course,” she said, “ and 
then from New York, in a little more than a fortnight 
I suppose. Later on it may be just a trifle difficult for 
us to hear from each other quite every week— you see 
I shall only go to some of the places for a couple of 
nights— but ” 


88 


MARIAN QRAT, SPINSTER. 


He held her close to him. “ I hate to let you go ! 
he declared. 

She kissed him. “ When I come back, ”she answered, 
“ you shall make me your wife ! 

He lived with his people, and Marian Gray’s letters 
used to come directed to the house. The earliest of 
them — from Queenstown, as she had promised — con- 
tained descriptions of the passengers, and injunctions 
to him not to be dull. The next half-dozen were 
dated from big cities — from Brooklyn, Philadelphia, 
Chicago. She was well, and happy, she averred ; her 
part “ went ” immensely, being a comedy one, and 
appealing to the Americans’ preference for humour ; 
the management was very kind to her ; and, if she 
felt a little homesick notwithstanding, it was simply 
her “ nasty nature,” and she deserved no sympathy. 
There was a good deal more (of a private character) in 
her epistles which he did not feel called upon to reveal 
to his inquiring family ; but he used to replace the 
closely-written sheets in their envelopes with a 
smile, and it was generally understood that Miss 
Marian Gray’s affection was not diminishing in her 
exile. 

By degrees, as the girl’s journeys grew more 
frequent, her correspondence became irregular. It 
was inevitable, and he admitted it. But he chafed, 
nevertheless, and when the letters did arrive, tore 
them open with increased impatience. 


MARIAN QRAT, SPINSTER. 


89 


Then one day he saw in the paper that a hotel in 
America had been demolished by fire, and he read the 
name of “ Marian Gray ” among the dead. 

They were all in the room — the luckless barrister, 
the mother, the sister. Harry had been standing on 
the hearth, glancing through the morning’s news 
before taking his seat at the breakfast table. He did 
not say much. He put the paper down quite quietly 
— only he had gone very white, and his voice was 
husky when he spoke. 

“ Marian is dead,” he said, in a low tone ; and he 
opened the door, and went slowly upstairs. 

He could not have endured the exclamations, the 
condolences, that would have expressed their pity for 
him. As yet he asked for nothing but to be left 
alone. Even he was sensible of no active pain at 
present; he had been stunned, and his mind could 
not immediately recover from the shock. ‘‘Marian 
was dead.” He repeated it to himself stupidly, 
staring, with eyes that did not see, over the opposite 
chimneys. He sat where he had dropped, on the 
cane chair before the window, his hands hanging 
loosely to his sides. “ Marian was dead.” It seemed 
so unreal, it touched his stupor so bluntly, that vaguely 
he wondered why it had unnerved him. It did not 
appear to him that he realized— that he grasped— it. 
He felt only a sense of overwhelming loss— a gap in 
the soul, while his brain was dull, as if some integral 


00 


MAUIAN ORA7, SPINSTER. 


part of the former had been wrenched away. When 
in intervals he became aware of himself he found he 
was always gazing fixedly at the same point. He got 
up, and dipped his head in cold water, as if he had 
been drunk. He recollected he had work to do 
to-day, and he knew he could not do it. He went 
back to the parlor; and now that the dazed sensation 
was passing, managed to respond to the commiseration 
offered him with some coherent phrase. 

He signified on the morrow his intention of going 
away for a few weeks. The home circle, the watchful 
eyes, he felt would kill him. lie walked to the office 
of the journal that employed him, and made the 
necessary arrangements. He yearned for the quietest 
place that he could find, and it occurred to him to go 
to a village in Devonshire of which he had once been 
shown some photographs, and which was as primitive, 
he had heard, as any remaining in the kingdom. 

It proved, when he reached it, to fulfil the descrip- 
tion. It was on the coast, and, so far as his grief 
could crave for anything but the unattainable, he had 
been longing for the sea. Misery, like sickness, has 
its fancies, and Harry Armytage, almost without 
knowing it, had pictured himself listening to the 
roaring of the sea with a gleam of anticipatory 
relief. 

The old-fashioned room he had secured overlooked 
the beach, and there were no other lodgers in the tiny 


MARIAN GRAY, SPINSTER. 


91 


house to disturb him. He gave himself up to his pain 
without an effort at self-restraint. He took desultory 
rambles on the sands and in the lanes, asking why 
Heaven had done this thing, why life was so bitter 
and cruel. It was not until he had been here a week 
that it even displayed itself to him how solitary an ex- 
istence he was leading — how congenial the spot he had 
selected was. It had suited his mood, and his mood 
had been too utterly unconscious for him to remark 
anything that did not clash with it. It was only by 
degrees that the need of comfort occurred to him ; that 
he began to wish for some one to whom he could tell 
his sorrow. Meditation, hitherto, and the absence of 
supervision had been enough. 

There was a quiet-voiced, graceful girl he sometimes 
saw, who was his landlady’s niece, he understood. She 
was not pretty ; under other circumstances he would 
never have noticed her. But now it became his cus- 
tom to talk to her — gradually indeed he grew to look 
forward to the talks. She was sympathetic, and she 
was fairly educated ; and his first conversation with 
her revealed to him that she had been observing his 
melancholy, and puzzling her gentle head about it ever 
since his arrival. 

It astonished him to perceive how completely she 
filled his new-born want. It was a process, the per- 
ception ; he did not see it for some time. When he did 
see it the poignancy of the pain he was wont to speak 
with her about had left him. 


92 


MARIAN GRAY, SPINSTER. 


In truth it gave place to a kind of pleasure. She 
soothed him, and revived in him an interest in life. He 
was not fond of her then, he was at that stage by no 
means ready to fall in love with her ; yet he was dull 
when he was not lounging beside her in the garden, 
and gayer when they were together and she helped 
him to forget. 

So the weeks merged into months, and before he re- 
turned to town it devolved upon him to perform one 
of the most ditficult tasks of his career. He had to 
write to his parents that he had discovered a woman 
who could console him in his affliction, and to an- 
nounce the fact that he had made her his wife. 

She was a wise, and withal a tender woman, this 
Mrs. Armytage, and when, as he used to do, her hus- 
band declared to her that he could not repay her af- 
fection with the same devotion that he had lavished 
on the dead, she only murmured : Give me what you 
can, dear ! ” and knew him better than he knew 
himself. 

For Harry Armytage, I am convinced, was, and is, 
perfectly contented in his second choice. The one 
great test of its wisdom — the crudest trial of the wife 
who loved him — came a few weeks after the ceremony 
had been performed; when a letter from Marian 
reached him, showing she had been included in the 
death-list by an error, and saying that, now that her 
injuries had left her well enough to travel, she was 
coming home. 


MARIAN GRAY, SPINSTER. 


93 


It was a test ! but the marriage stood it, after his 
first cry had died away. After all he had grown used 
to his wife already, and habit, as we know, is second 
nature. The girl who came back praying for him, 
too, had been badly hurt, and her face bore a scar that 
was not pleasing. Yes, I am quite sure he is con- 
tented : and time heals most things — so that to-day 
the three are even friendly, and talk of that time 
together Avith something which looks like equanimity. 

Do you ask who I am who speak so confidently, 
and tell the tale ? My name — it was not written I 
should ever change it ! — my name is Marian Gray. 





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MONEY MAKES THE MARE TO GO. 


From Miss Laura de Lorme, of the Coronet Theatre^ 
Piccadilly, to Benjamin Webber, Abednego Build- 
ings, W. 

‘‘ June 3rd. 

“ My Ever Reverend : Young Verinder means to 
call upon you to-morrow to try to get you to renew 
that promissory note of his for £7,000. I want you 
to do it for him. He would like to be accommodated 
with a thousand ‘ ready ’ into the bargain, and you 
may just as well be benevolent on that point too. It 
will all be spent on me, and most of it take the form of 
diamonds, which will always realise. 

“ I continue to nurse expectations of retiring from 
the boards, and you may hope to see me figure in the 
Peerage yet ! Yours, in a tearing hurry, 

“ Laura. 

“ P. S. You might even open a bottle of the ‘ Poy.’ 
I shall get it back ! ” 

[By Special Messenger]. 

From Yiscount Yerinder, Crocus Club, Pall Mall, to 
Miss Laura de Lorme, The Hermitage, Regents 
Parle, 

“June 4 th. 

“ My Darling Girl : I have called at your place 
twice to-day, and been told on each occasion that 


98 


MONEY MAKES THE MARE TO GO. 


‘ Miss de Lorme was out/ What is the use of sulking, 
and being unreasonable? You know, dearest, I would 
do anything on earth to oblige you ; but as for mar- 
riage, upon my soul, I can’t ! Why in the world develop 
a passion for matrimony ? I should certainly bore 
you as soon as you were commanded to love me, and, 
as things have been between us, I flatter myself you 
have found me tolerably agreeable. 

^‘Webber ‘parted’ like a brick this morning — 
never was so astonished in my life. If you knew him 
you would appreciate my surprise ! Send me a line by 
bearer to say you Avill have supper with me to-night 
after the show, and let me try on a bracelet, which I 
fancy will please you immensely. 

“ Yours always devotedly, 

“ Dotty.” 

From the Earl of Lacklands, Mortgaged Manoy\ 

Herts. to Lord Yerinder, Croc as Cluh^ Pall Mall. 

“ July 4th. 

“Dear Dotty: Your repugnance to meeting the 
young lady may be mitigated by the assurance that 
she is rather pretty. I cannot declare she is a ‘ beauty,’ 
nor tell you complacently that she is the daughter of 
an American millionaire. But she isn’t a fright ; and 
she has three thousand a year of her own, and distant 
expectations. You might do worse ! 

“My boy, three thousand a year, and distant ex- 
pectations are really not so bad. There will be very 


MONET MAKES THE MARE TO 00. 


99 


little for you when I die ; your allowance is a dread- 
ful drain upon me while I live ; and if you do not 
marry money, I fail to see what is to become of 
you. 

“ You may, of course, retort that Miss Sanderson’s 
income is not ‘ money,’ and I am Avilling to confess 
that at one time it would have made me shiver. 
Everything’s relative, however, and to-day three thou- 
sand a year, and no creditors, looks to me a haven of 
repose. 

“Can you afford to stand out for anything better? 
A bird in the hand is worth forty flying, and I don’t 
think you can. Come down and be introduced to her 
at any rate. If I could see you happily married (and 
feel that your meagre allowance was no longer needed) 
I should be a comparatively contented man. 

“ Ever your affectionate father, 

“ Lacklands.” 

From Lord Yerinder, Crocus Club, Pall Mall, to 
The Earl of Lacklands. 

“ July 8th. 

“ My Dear Governor : What you suggest is alto- 
gether impossible. Imjorimis, I don’t want to marry ; 
secondly, a wife with three thousand a year is too 
ridiculous for expostulation. Benjamin Webber holds 
my paper to the tune of £8,000. Is that explanation 
enough? Your affectionate son, 

“ Dotty.” 


100 


MONET MAKES THE MARE TO 00. 


From the Earl of Lacklands to Lord Y erinder. 

“ July lOtli. 

“ Dear Dotty : If it is actually true that a lunatic 
has lent you £8,000, what is his address? I should 
like to know him. Frankly, I can’t believe it. I 
have had considerable experience of the tribe, and I 
can’t believe it. Don’t be an idiot, but come and 
marry the three thousand a year. 

“Your incredulous father, 

“ Lacklands.” 

Fi^om Miss Laura de Lorme, The Hermitage^ Regen fs 

Parh^ to Lord Y erinder. Crocus Ghd)^ Pall Mall. 

“July 15 th. 

“My Lord: I will not attempt to defend myself 
against the cruel reproaches that you utter. When a 
woman has loved a man better than her pride, better 
than her womanhood itself, he has forever the advan- 
tage of her; and if her conscience awakens she is 
always liable to be called fickle and false. 

“JN'o, I will not see you any more. I am deter- 
mined, upbraid me as you will. If I were a Koman 
Catholic, I would go into a convent. Only as your 
wife could I continue to meet you with any self- 
respect, and you have made me definitely understand 
that your name is too good for me to bear. 

“Dotty, my Dotty, ‘Dotty’ for the last time — 
good-bye. Your heart-broken, 


“ Laura.” 


MONET MAKES THE MARE TO 00. 


101 


From Miss Laura de Lorme, The Hermitage^ JRegenfs 
Parh^ to Yiscount Yerinder. 

September 5th. 

“My Lord: When your letter was handed to me 
just now I could scarcely believe I was about to hear 
from you again. When I read the contents, need I 
say how passionately grieved I was. That Mr. 
Benjamin Webber should threaten you with the 
bankruptcy court if you do not meet your bill is 
additionally painful to me, because (a confession) it 
was really through my influence with him that the 
advances were made. I asked him to make them. 

“ You cannot understand, why, in his note, he re- 
fers you to me ? Mr. Webber, my lord, is my papa. 
1 fancy he guessed something of the love I bore you — 
why should I disguise it, of the love I bear — and in 
a father’s tenderness he would do much to make me 
happy. I think I am safe in saying that if I became 
your wife he would hand your acceptances back to 
you in a parental handclasp. More than that — that 
he would make a settlement of at least £100,000. 

“ Between you and me the mention of money 
sounds very sordid ; but you have asked for an ex- 
planation, and that is what papa’s note means. 

“ Yours very sincerely, 

“ Laura de Lorme.” 


102 


MONET MAKES THE MARE TO GO. 


Extract from The Society Chiffonier. 

“As usual the whisper in The Chiffonier^ which 
was the first in the field to announce that another 
noble lord would shortly choose his bride from the 
coulisses has proved correct. Miss Laura de Lorme, 
the talented actress, will on Tuesday next terminate 
her engagement to Viscount Yerinder, only son of 
the Earl of Lacklands, at St. Ethelred’s, Berkeley 
Square. Contemporaries please copy without ac- 
knowledgment.” 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 



A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


I HAVE never understood to this day whether what 
I did made me amenable to the law. For one thing, 
I have never liked to ask, and for another I really do 
not much care. But this is beginning at the end, which 
always seems to me a foolish thing to do, though I 
notice that many writers are making it the fashion. 

The beginning, then, was a summer morning. I was 
staying in Aberdeen, a nice, white, clean town, with 
charming environs, for which I had long entertained 
an affection. To me as a painter — or as an “ artist,” 
as most painters comprehensively style themselves — 
the “ bits ” to be found about the Scotch city served a 
double purpose : they gave me pleasure to view, and 
they provided me with subjects for sketches, which 
Mosetenstine, the dealer, would take off my hands on 
my return to town at prices not more iniquitous 
than he would have offered me for anything else. 

I remember, as I sat before my easel, ‘‘ knocking 
in ” a cottage, and a curve of lane, with a glimpse of 
rivulet (which “composed” admirably) that I was per- 
mitting my imagination to foresee the time when the 
name of Percy Kent should be displayed beneath a 
landscape on the line, and Mosetenstine, emerging 
from the dense crowd which barred my approach to 


106 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


my own work, should salaam before me and shed tears. 
Why he should shed tears I do not think I deter- 
mined, but it was typical of admiration, and I pictured 
him as doing so. 

If after this I said I was very young, it would be a 
pleonasm. To be explicit I was t\venty-three. I had 
a rich relative, from whom I had no shadow of -ex- 
pectations. I had a small talent, and a large measure 
of artistic sensibility, and I had a cigar. 

The smoke from my Havana curled lazily into the 
warm air, and I was working on the hollyhocks which 
reared their pretentious cheapness just inside the 
palings of my cottage, when the narrow door opened, 
and a girl looked out who appeared more beautiful 
than any 1 had ever seen. 

My proximity to where she stood — still more the 
fact that the house where she seemed to live was 
serving me for material — made it natural that I 
should speak. I said : 

“ I hope you don’t think I am taking a liberty ? It 
is so pretty that I couldn’t help making a study of 
it.” 

How I am free to admit that — her beauty notwith- 
standing — I wondered immediately the words were 
uttered whether my tone of address was appropriate. 
The place was obviously her home, and though she did 
not look a peasant, she must be one. 

Her reply relieved me immensely, and delighted me 
too: 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


107 


“ Artists may do what they like, mayn’t they ? 
And I am sure we should be very pleased.” 

Not a trace in that voice of what I had feared must 
spoil her. A faint Scotch accent — how irresistibly 
piquant it is ! — and that was all. Evidently she had 
been educated. Her head was bare : she wore a pale 
pink cotton dress. She came closer to me, and looked 
over my shoulder. I can see her as she was that day 
even now. I saw her for many days afterward. 

It grew by degrees to be her custom to come out 
and watch me as I worked ; and if the work was done 
slowly, and we talked a great deal, who will blame 
me ? Her name I learnt was Floris : it was the 
first time I had heard it, though it is common enough 
in Scotland, and it struck me, as it does still, as more 
than pretty. 

She was ambitious too ! The narrow life she led 
cooped her. Edinburgh had given her restlessness 
and aspirations, and “buried” — as she herself said 
— by the Brig o’ Balgownie, near which she lived, 
her ardour was fretting her. She was like a bird in a 
cage. 

“ Oh,” she used to say, “ you can’t think how I 
dream of going away— into the world, into a big city 
like London ! It is very, very silly of me — I shall 
never go — but the thought will come, sir ! ” 

That was at first. Afterward I persuaded her to 
drop the “ sir,” and call me “ Mr. Kent.” I declared 


108 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


it was ridiculous for her to “ sir ” me : she was a lady ! 
She said: “I ought to; we are quite poor and 
common. My mother scraped and saved ever since 
I was born to send me to school — Mr. Kent ! ” 

Little Floris, what a lovely baby she looked ! And 
how she blushed at the earliest Percy ! ” Little 
Floris ! You were an excuse for any madness ; almost 
I forgive you ! 

Yes, I married her! She had broken into sobs the 
morning I had told her I was going away — cried 
piteously, with the tears trickling down her pale face. 
I made an appointment to see her again in the evening 
— just to say “good-bye” before I left. It was moon- 
light when she met me. We stood among the trees 
with my arms round her. I had never kissed her until 
then, but now I kissed her passionately. I knew she 
loved me, and I had wrestled with my own love for 
weeks. I kissed her wet cheeks, and smoothed her 
hair; and we stood in the shadow so that no one 
passing by might view us. Across the fence we 
could see the lamp in her mother’s parlour shining 
behind the blind. 

It was cowardly perhaps to hesitate, but convention 
is strong, and I did hesitate, though I said it at last : 

“ Floris, will you be my wife ? ” 

Her arms tightened round my neck, and I could feel 
her heart throbbing against my breast. 

So, as I have said, I married her. 


A LUCKY YOUm MAN. 


100 


We were married very quietly — not to euphemize, 
we were married secretly. She had told me what she 
had never confessed before, that she was engaged to a 
cousin, and her mother would never let her come to 
me. 

“ He is like her son,'’ she shivered, “ she would never 
let me break my word if I prayed to her. Afterwards 
we can tell her, and she will forgive. But not now, 
darling, not now ! And, oh, I am afraid of him, I 
hate him — he is a lout ! ” 

My fingers clenched at the terror I detected in her 
voice. At that moment I would have defied an army 
of ‘‘ louts ” for her. She was my world. 

We “ran away.” I eloped with a peasant’s 
daughter. If she had been a ward in chancery I 
could have done no more. I took her to the big city 
she was so anxious to see. I engaged furnished rooms 
in the prettiest suburb that was compatible with my 
price. And I was happy — for a while. 

It is vain to deny the fact that Floris was happier 
longer. Into my own honey at the end of three 
months the adulteration had crept. But with her 
there seemed no admixture. She had even refused to 
communicate our marriage to her mother untd I in- 
sisted. “ My contentment is so sweet it seems a pity 
to spoil it ! ” she demurred. And when I gained my 
point, and the news was written : “ I told you so ! ” 
she said, and tossed th^ answer hastily into the fire. 


110 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


Her mother was implacable, I understood ; and, when 
other letters came, Floris always frowned and 
trembled, and served them as she had served the first. 
I confess I was not flattered to be deemed so un- 
desirable a son-in-law. I admitted it at once. Florih 
smiled. “ What does it matter ? ” she asked. “ W e 
have each other ! ” Her escape from the village that 
had wearied her left in her no want unfulfilled. She 
was completely satisfied. She sang about the house 
in gladness. And I was bored. 

• It is the truth. The romance was over, and the 
wife I had taken bored me. She had seemed to 
understand so much, and she proved to understand so 
little. She had listened so sympathetically that I had 
taken it for granted she could talk. I had paid for a 
canary, and the paint came off, and it was only a 
sparrow. Even attired by a London milliner she did 
not look so beautiful. My passion turned to ashes in 
my mouth, and I cursed myself for a fool while Floris 
still sang — she was so pleased. 

It was at this period that my uncle died, and sur- 
prised a man who had hitherto only been surprised at 
his own stupidity, by making me residuary legatee. 

I was rich, pot-boilers were no longer necessary, and, 
even with a peasant for my wife, I think I could have 
been happy if it had not been that I fell in love. 

She was his niece, but of her he had seen much more 
than of me ; indeed her family had nursed the hope 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


Ill 


that she would be his heiress. Perhaps it was the 
consciousness that I had unwittingly baulked a justifi- 
able expectation which first excited my interest in her. 
She was called Maud, and, thrown in contact with her 
in the weeks that followed, my interest deepened into 
compassion, and my compassion into love. 

Then came the hardest thing to bear — I saw she 
cared for me! I had not avowed my marriage to 
these relations who were so new to me. To her I had 
not acknowledged it because I lacked the courage. 1 
was ashamed of the imbecility I had committed, and 
now it stood between me and the woman I would have 
given my life to win. Once I was on the verge of 
acknowledging it. We were in her mother’s drawing- 
room. My words had become personal, almost a con- 
fession of what I felt. “Maud” — I murmured, and 
then paused, and turned aside. 

She glanced at me. She thought I was about to 
say, “ I love you.” The perception of what she looked 
for, of what she had the right to look for, shook me so 
that the explanation I had rehearsed refused to pass 
my lips. 

Opportunely her mother came in. 

“ I have something I must tell you,” I faltered, as I 
took my leave. “ I will see you to-morrow, I may, 
Maud — I must ! ” 

I bent my way slowly to my lodging ; my heart was 
heavy as lead ; my shame, my misery, was burning in 


112 


A LUCKY YOUNG MAN. 


me. Floris was in the parlour, and I heard a man’s 
voice. Instinctively I knew it was the “ lout,” and he 
had found her. 

He was a low-browed, heavy- jawed rustic— her term 
described him well. She was crouching on the hearth. 
I wondered why she was so afraid ; but his outburst 
as I entered enlightened me. 

“ You villain ! ” he roared. “ My wife ! give me 
back my wife ! ” 

I gave her to him back. I made no demur ; I said 
that he might have her. Anticipation of an attack 
faded into stupefaction and stupefaction turned to joy. 
They left the house together, Floris’s prevailing 
emotion gratitude at my assurance that she need not 
fear a prosecution for bigamy from any loquacity of 
mine. 

Whether the law calls the silence I kept during her 
lifetime by any unpleasant name I do not know, but 
when I went to see Maud on the morrow, my commu- 
nication was different to what I had intended, and the 
answer she made to it was “ yes.” 



IN THIS WORLD ONE CAN NEVER 

TELL 





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ii 


IN THIS WORLD ONE CAN NEVER 
TELL 


Lauea Willoughby was the niece of a rector in the 
Shires, and the daughter of a literary man, who, dying 
while she was in short clothes, left her to the guidance 
of the invertebrate blonde who shared the responsibility 
of her birth. The invertebrate survivor had been an 
actress, in which capacity the clergyman’s brother had 
met and married her, and when she was twenty years 
of age, Laura displayed a marked inclination to follow 
in her mother’s footsteps. 

As the rector was very comfortably off, and un- 
blessed by children, it was not thought needful to 
acquaint him with the decision his niece had come to. 
The worthy man had his prejudices, and the stage 
was one of them. He had shown a laudable affection 
for Laura on such rare occasions as he had seen her 
since her father’s death, and the girl and her mother 
both determined it would be thankless to give him un- 
necessary pain. Laura obtained an engagement to go 
out with a theatrical company on tour ; and when she 
had been in the profession about twelve months she 
committed the weakest action in her history. She 


1] 6 IN THIS WORLD ONE CAN NEVER TELL. 


married an adventurer described as Harry Fairfax, 
gentleman, who disappeared six weeks after the cere- 
mony had been performed. 

That he had fallen in love with her admits of no 
doubt, for her salary Avas a nominal one, and he had 
followed her from Bolton to Oldham and Manchester 
before they exchanged a Avord. That she had been in 
love with him is less certain, but he Avas exceedingly 
good-looking, and the novelty, as well as the romance 
of the courtship, had fascinated her. 

Whether her heart had been seriously concerned in 
the affair or not, his inexplicable desertion temporarily 
shattered her health. lie had suddenly announced an 
intention of going up to toAvn. He had to see his 
solicitor, he declared, but would be back on the folio av- 
ing afternoon. Ho neAvs reached her for a fortnight ; 
her letters to the address he had left behind him 
Avere returned AAuth “ Gone aAvay ” scraAvled across the 
envelopes ; and, the prey to all sorts of terrors, she be- 
gan to think he must have died. 

TJien she had a line to say it Avas as “ dead ” she Avas 
to think of him. 

“‘You Avill never see me any more,” he wrote. 
“ Where I am going I can’t explain, but I am sending 
this to tell you that you are to hold yourself free. We 
have had a very good time together, Laura ; and 
console yourself by remembering it, though it’s all 
frightful hard luck ! Don’t consider yourself tied to 


IN THIS WOELD ONE CAN NEVER TELL. Ul 


me ; don’t live out your life looking on yourself as a 
married woman. We sha’n’t meet again, and you are 
at perfect liberty to do what you please. If I had 
guessed there was any danger — ” “ Danger” had been 

scratched out, and the note, which was dirty and 
blurred, came to an abrupt termination. 

She sobbed steadily for two hours, and then ordered 
a cup of strong tea, and told the manager that her 
husband was seriousl}^ ill, and that she wished to join 
him as soon as the “ understudy ” was able to replace 
her. 

When the “ understudy ” (who was very glad, and 
expressed regrets which nobody believed) was letter- 
perfect in the “part,” Mrs. Fairfax went home to her 
mother in London. Her mother weakly opined that 
she had behaved like an absolute fool, and that “ her 
Fairfax ” was a blackguard or a convict ; but she saw 
some sense in his message, and pointed out that the 
only redeeming virtue possible to Laura in the matter 
now was to forget all about it. 

There was, however, a cogent reason why the mar- 
riage should be avowed, and they accordingly set to 
work to invent a fitting biography of “Laura’s poor 
husband ” his life and his death. The “ widow’s weeds ” 
were pronounced singularly becoming, and when the 
chance came, her devotion to the “ posthumous ” child— 
“ the ghastly consequences,” as Mrs. Willoughby called 
it — was touching in the extreme. 


118 mrsis WORLD ONE CAN NEVER TELL. 

By the time it was born Laura had almost recovered 
from the shock. It was a girl, and having a fancy in 
that direction, she christened it Gwendolen. Mrs. 
"Willoughby, who was gratuitously untruthful, explained 
to their friends that it had been “ his ” favorite sister’s 
name, and really under the circumstances “Gwen- 
dolen ” did as well as anything else. 

As the child grew, Mrs. Fairfax’s sincere affection 
for the offspring of her ill-starred union developed into 
an all-absorbing passion. She was nervous when the 
child was out of her sight. When it had measles she 
wanted a consultation, and, as often as the elder 
woman was willing to listen, she would weave plans 
for its education, and speculate what the future held 
in store for her darling. “ Gwendolen should never 
go to a boarding-school,” she said. “ She was never 
to be away from home.” It was as if the tragedy in 
her own life were constantly torturing her with mis- 
givings for her daughter’s. Before it was seven years 
old the child represented the one object of interest in 
the mother’s existence. She woke up asking of it ; 
she went to bed thinking of it. Her world revolved 
round the child. 

It was at this stage that her uncle departed for a 
wider sphere, and left her sole legatee. 

She was, as he had been, “ very comfortably off ” 
now, and, because the country would be ever so much 
healthier for Gwendolen, she removed to the parish 


IN mis WORLD ONE GAN NEVER TELL. 119 


the rector had so long adorned, and took up her 
residence in a charming maisonnette with a garden, 
and an orchard and several other excellent and delight- 
ful things. She even bought a pony for Gwendolen, 
because she Avished her to have accomplishments in 
her girlhood ; but then the animal looked very large 
to her, and the child looked very small, and she let the 
dealer have it back again at a loss. 

When she had been living in Eightgates for three 
summers, and Mrs. Willoughby had joined the rector 
(as her daughter hoped) an unforeseen complication 
occurred to disturb the pretty widow’s peace. She 
received a proposal. Sir Hector Grimsby, with a 
rent-roll which had been the despair of innumerable 
chaperons, and the ideal of more seasons of dehutmtes 
than the chaperons cared to recollect, asked her to be 
his wife. He Avas not impassioned — he Avas over fifty, 
and he had the gout. He acknowledged that his 
chief desire Avas to have an heir, but he coupled the 
confession Avith the assurance that he liked her very 
much. 

The proverb tells us that a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing. Mrs. Fairfax, Avho trembled at the 
prospect opened up to her beloved child, had the 
erroneous conviction that so long after as seven years 
— whether Gwendolen’s father was living or not — 
the marriage Avould be legal. After seven years 
such unions are not bigamous, she had heard. She 
leapt at the conclusion that therefore they are valid. 


120 IN THIS WORLD ONE CAN NEVER TELL. 


So after many wakeful nights she murmured ^Wes ’’ 
to Sir Hector, and Gwendolen was transferred to the 
luxury of a young princess, and Sir Hector in due 
course was given the heir for which he pined. The 
heir passed sturdily through the successive stages of 
whooping cough, and chicken-pox, and scarlatina, and 
gave promise of becoming a lusty man. Gwendolen 
grew into a very lovely girl, and the parents were 
perfectly satisfied with their bargain. 

Then, as always happens in such cases — in fiction at 
all events — the other man came back. He did not 
come in through French windows, nor wear an Inver- 
ness cape. He was shabby and colloquial. He said 
he had only been out of prison two months ; he ad- 
mitted he had behaved like a scroundel ; but he be- 
lieved under the circumstances that Lady Grimsby 
might find it judicious to do something for him in the 
way of an annual allowance. He had had considerable 
difficulty in tracing her, and had been put to some 
expense. Tactfully, he had called when Sir Hector was 
out. She made a little stand at first, but her illusion 
that he was no longer her husband he remorselessly 
dispelled. 

She gave him all the cash she had in the house, in 
tears and agony, and promised to send him a cheque 
for a hundred pounds in a week. She kept the 
promise, because she preferred the risk of paying him 
by cheque to having him come down to Eightgates ; 


IN ^ THIS WORLD ONE GAN NEVER TELL. 121 


and she had another visit from him a month later. 
He was much improved in appearance on his second 
visit ; he had been to a tailor, and explained that he 
had found him dear. In the six months following 
she sent him five hundred pounds more, which 
exhausted her private account, and compelled her to 
hand him a ring to satisfy his next demand. 

She was now appearing in a very extravagant light, 
and Sir Hector was puzzled by her frequent requests 
for money. Her milliner’s bills, which had never 
been heavier than was to be looked for in a woman of 
her position, sounded suddenly phenomenal. He 
asked her to let him see one once; she made an 
excuse, and aroused his suspicions. On the next 
occasion that her Fairfax ventured to the manor. Sir 
Hector saw him. He effected a little plan to see him, 
but that is beside the matter. He let him go away, 
and a few days afterwards made an opportunity of 
examining Lady Grimsby’s pass-book. In the pass- 
book he found maii}^ entries which explained the 
‘Gnilliner’s bills,” and confirmed the conviction of 
his dishonour. 

He was not a man to waste words. He told her 
plainH that she was unfaithful to him, waited for a 
moment for her answer, which was only a tempest of 
sobs, and went up to town to consult his lawyers. 

From his hotel in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor 
Square — he had been familiar with that little hotel 


122 IN THIS WORLD ONE CAN NEVER TELL. 


for years — he sent her a letter. He indulged in no 
reproaches ; he repeated his accusation in the precise 
language on which he prided himself ; and he formally 
announced his intention of applying for a divorce. 

Then Lady Grimsby — or Mrs. Fairfax — made her 
reply : “ My dear Sir Hector,” she wrote, “ you cannot 
divorce me, because an essential preliminar}^ to a 
divorce is a marriage. I am not your wife. The 
man you suppose to be my lover is in reality my 
husband. I imagined him long ago dead, and (I 
regret it as much as you can) he is detestably alive. 
I would have spared you the pain of the confession, 
but your own impetuosity has forced it on me. 
You cannot divorce me, but there are two other 
courses open to you. You can settle with the man 
much more advantageously than I, and pension him 
off, or you can create a scandal, and render your 
heir illegitimate. I remain (pending your decision) 
— Laura Grimsby.” 

She wrote that answer a long time ago, and in the 
year of grace 1893 it is generally admitted that one of 
the pleasantest houses to stay at in the Shires is that 
of Sir Hector and Lady Grimsby, with their charming 
boy and girl. 


YOU MUSTN’T PLAY WITH LOVE. 



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YOU MUSTN’T PLAY WITH LOVE. 


From Fred Coynless, in cheap lodgings^ to Miss 
Nellie Constant, in the country, 

‘‘May 5th, 18—. 

“ My Own Darling : ‘ Hearts of Gold ’ has been de- 
clined once more. The publishers write : ‘ In view of 
the present depression in the book market ’ — and the 
rest of their hateful cant. Why am I not a mechanic, 
or a cobbler, or a policeman % All these men manage 
to marry, somehow : it is only for an author that a 
girl has to wait until her hair is grey. 

“ When 1 think of that immovable old uncle of mine, 
* and of all he might do for me now he is Lord Mayor, 
I could smash the furniture with indignation. I drop 
in to the Mansion House occasionally to luncheon, and 
as often as I get an opportunity I urge him to re- 
member his promise to find me something. He in- 
variably says he will ‘ bear it in mind,’ and there it 
ends. 

“I had a long talk about the matter with his 
daughter the other day. Georgina and I have been 
chums from children. She agreed with me that his 


m 


YOU MUSTN'T PLAT WITH LOVE, 


apathy is disgraceful. It is not that he has no liking 
for me — that is the aggravation; it is simply and 
solely that he won’t bestir himself. If I were his son 
he would secure me a cosy berth in a month : as his 
nephew I may continue reminding him of my necessity 
till I am hoarse. 

“ I wonder how much longer we are to wait for our 
happiness — ^you and I ! Do you know, it is four years 
this week since you owned 5"ou cared for me ? And 
we are no further advanced than we were then. 

“ Send me a line soon, dearest. I can’t write much, 
I am too down in the mouth ; but you know how 
sweet it is to me to hear from you. 

“ Yours always, 

“ Feed.” 

From Miss Nellie Constant, in the counb'y^ to Fred 
COYNLESS, 

“ May 1st, 18 — . 

“ My Poor Boy : Publishers are hateful, and 
‘ Hearts of Gold ’ is exquisite. I say it as a critic,, re- 
member. This is the hastiest of lines to save the post. 
I mean to write more fully to-morrow ; but I couldn’t 
let the night go by without sending you a word. 
Fred, you are never, never to feel that way about my 
waiting again! You know what I mean : never to 
reproach yourself, and think I am hardly done by. I 
couldn’t be happy with anybody else. Do you under- 


YOU MUSTISTT PLAY WITH LOVE. 


127 


stand ? I am waiting to please myself. And I will 
wait till you are ready, however long it may be. 

“ Make another attempt to infuse some vitality into 
your uncle. My dear, 1 love you. 

“ Nellie.’’ 

From Feed Coynless, in cheap lodgings.^ to Miss 
Nellie Constant, in the conntry. 

‘‘ May 5th, 18 — . 

“ Angel : He said : ‘ Yes, certainly, I must see what 
I can do’ — and he will do nothing. I am tired to 
death of his affability, which never leads to any re- 
sult. Any number of big-wigs were there, any one of 
whom could have helped me to a post, and never one 
of them will be approached on the subject. As soon 
as I turn my back he forgets all about me. 

“ I have, however, the germ of an idea, which I dis- 
cussed with Georgina. It will startle you ; but I 
know my man, and it is wise. If he thought 
Georgina was fond of me — if he thought she 
had fixed her heart on marrying me, for instance — 
he would, after the first shock, set about getting me 
into a good thing. 

‘‘Do you begin to grasp? My notion is to pre- 
tend there is an engagement between me and her : 
she will lend herself to the plan. It originated by 
my complaining that if he had really the interest in 
my welfare that he thinks he has, he could push me 


1^8 YOU MUSTN^T PLA Y WITH LO VE, 

on just as easily as he obtained that excellent appoint- 
ment for his son-in-law. She admitted this was so, 
and then — I don’t know, but the farce was gradually 
suggested. 

“ What do you say to it ? His first intimation is to 
come from her. She is going to tell him this evening 
that ‘ the happiness of her life ’ is bound up in me. 
She anticipates a scene, of course ; but she was always 
the spoilt child, and he will deny her nothing. Ife 
will exert himself on my behalf then with a vengeance, 
and when I am ‘ in something ’ we can let him down 
lightly enough. He won’t be very indignant at hav- 
ing been deceived, you may be sure. I shall not be 
a very desirable at the best! On the whole, he 
will doubtless be relieved. Will write you develop- 
ments as they occur. In kissing your beautiful blue 
eyes, 

“ Always your own, 

“ Fred.” 

From the same to the same. 

“ May 9th, 18—. 

“My Darling Nell: Step No. 1: I received a 
card inviting me to a conversazione last evening. 
Hitherto the hotel-like luncheon parties have been the 
extent of my acquaintance with that interior. 

“ Met Georgina at the top of the staircase ; she 
whispered he had taken it fairly well. 

Had a talk with him during the song of an Amerh 


YOU MUSTN'T PLA Y WITH LOVE, 


129 


can amateur who wants the Lord Mayor’s influence to 
bring her out in London as a prima donna. He was 
cheery enough, considering all things, and said we 
must not look to marry yet awhile, but with my ‘ tal- 
ent for literature ’ I was ’ sure to succeed ultimately, 
and, in the meanwhile — perhaps a consulate, eh ? He 
must speak to Lord Belshazzar about it ; did 1 know 
Lord Belshazzar ? — no ! I must let him introduce me. 
I let him. Old humbug, he has never introduced me 
to anybody worth knowing in the place before. Hope 
to goodness he will work it before his term of mayor- 
alty expires. Cinderella at twelve o’clock will be a 
fool to him then, and Lord Belshazzar as distant as the 
Appennines. 

“ I asked him if we might consider ourselves engaged. 
He said, ‘Er — not formally for the present, but of 
course he would not object to — ’ and was facetious. 
Glad it is not formally, upon my soul ; how I should 
have raised a ring I can’t divine ! 

“ AVhy be so mournful about the little comedy? It 
is for a good end, and I fancy I hear our wedding 
chimes already. Georgina has declared she is devoted 
to me, and will know no peace till we are man and 
Avife. The girl is really an actress. I never dreamt 
she had it in her ! 

“ Yours entirely, 

“ Fred.” 


m 


YOU MUSTN'T TLA Y WITH LO VE. 


From the same to the same. 

“June 7th, 18 — . 

“My Dear Little Girl: You complain that my 
letters are hurried; but if you knew how hurried I 
am! I am practically living at the Mansion House, 
and can scarcely call my life my own. 

“Yes, dear, it is, I admit, necessary to feign affection 
for Georofina in front of mv uncle. What would you 
have? It is the fiery intensity of our presumed 
passion for each other that is propelling the ponderous 
Sir Thomas along the road that means union to you 
and me. 

“ Yes, and I acknowledge also I have to be with 
her more than formerly in private. Of course I hav^e. 
Don’t be unreasonable, Nell! Seeing that I am 
ostensibly her fiance, I cannot help meeting her when 
the opportunity for my doing so stares everybody in 
the face. In the time-honored phrase, we cannot 
spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar. Now and then 
I almost feel that I have never known her myself. 
We were always confidential, but, being with her so 
constantly, I am finding depths of sympathy, and 
little springs of wit that take me by surprise notwith- 
standing 

“Nothing in the shape of an appointment settled 
yet, but there is talk of a private-secretaryship to Sir 
Jonas Grant. Certainly will report progress in 
detail. Yours as ever, Fred.” 


YOU MUSTN'T PLAY WITH LOVE. 


131 


From Fred Coynless, to Miss Geoegika Pursang, 
Mansion House, London. 

‘‘ July 10th, 18 — . 

“ I don’t know how to address you ; I don’t know 
how to speak to you if we meet. When the thing 
happened it seemed to take the senses out of me. 
And yet I ought to have seen — I ought to have 
guessed it would occur. Georgina, I can’t take it 
back ; I don’t want to take it back — not the kiss nor 
what I said. I did, I do, love you horribly ! 

“ I was fond of that girl once — at the beginning. 
It was years ago; the fancy is outgrown. I thank 
you for showing me my mistake, even though you 
have shown it to me unwittingly, even if your confu- 
sion when I kissed you meant less than I have dared to 
hope. 

“Send me a word to tell me if you will see me 
again — if I may hope indeed. I will write to Miss 
Constant the moment I receiv^e your note — to leave 
her unenlightened would be dishonorable, and Georg- 
ina’s lover must be above reproach ! 

“ Say ‘ yes’ and I shall understand I am Ahe most 
fortunate of men. 

“ Fred.” 

Extract from the “ City Press.” 

“ An informal gathering took place last evening at 
the Mansion House to celebrate the betrothal of the 
daughter of the Lord Mayor to Mr. Frederick Coyn- 


132 


YOU MUSTN'T PLA Y WITH LO YE. 


less, the lady’s cousin. Miss Pursang by her amiabil- 
ity and beauty has won the admiration of all who 
have the privilege of her acquaintance, and seldom 
have we known a more delightful duty than this of 
adding our quota to the general shower of 
felicitations which the announcement of the engage- 
ment has evoked.” 

From Miss IS'ellie Constant, in the country., to Fred 

COYNLESS. 

“ May you be happy ! Good-bye.” 


ii 


SLEEP, GENTLE SLEEP.” 







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SLEEP, GENTLE SLEEP. 


(4 


[Adapted from the French.] 

When I was a little boy, a long time ago, living 
with my father and mother, I used to look upon bed- 
time as the sweetest moment in the whole day. 
Most children very much dislike being sent to bed. 
In my case it was otherwise. I simply loved it. 

Dinner was over; and my mother, after having 
dusted the oil-cloth, placed a cup of coffee beside my 
father. Poor fellow! he was the only one of the 
family who took it, not from self-indulgence, but as a 
stimulant to keep him wide awake for hours for his 
writing. And while he sweetened his mocha, my 
mother — a plump matron of forty, still youthful — 
turning continually toward her husband with the 
tender, intelligent glances of a faithful dog — my 
mother, I say, brought her work-basket. My three 
sisters, with only one year’s difference in their 
respective ages, very much alike in their quiet beauty, 
their gowns cut from the same piece of stuff, and their 
hair dressed with severe simplicity, began to hem 
pocket-handkerchiefs; and I, the little boy, the 
youngest, the Benjamin, raised aloft on my high chair 


136 


8LKKP, GENTLE SLEEP: 


by the addition of the big family Bible, used to build 
houses with cards. 

In summer, during the long days, the lamp was 
lighted as late as possible, and through the open 
window one could see the summer evening sky with 
fantastic clouds and the glorious beauty of the setting 
sun. My mother used always to declare that it was 
fatal for the digestion to write immediately after 
dinner and so she used to beguile my father into con- 
versation in order to keep him from commencing his 
evening Avork — copying work at threepence the 
])age for a contractor living near. My poor father, a 
literary dreamer, who in his young days had written 
love sonnets, had come down to this drudgery, and 
employed his evenings in copying technical jargon: 
“ Taking to pieces and re-mending lock — giving play 
to staple,” and the rest of it. To-night he Avas gay, 
for things Avere going pretty smoothly in the humble 
houseliold, and he was chatting pleasantly Avith his 
wife and children. A picture dealer had offered my 
eldest sister Fanny a couple of guineas for a picture 
she had copied in the IS'ational Gallery. The second 
girl, Susan, had been hammering half the day at 
Boccherini’s Minuet. As to Louise, the youngest, she 
only thought of amusement and dress. There she 
Avas, giving us the description of a lovely little hat 
that she had seen in a milliner’s Avindow in Bond 
Street, and announcing her intention of making one 
like it in vieAV of the Bank Holiday near at hand. 


SLEEP, GENTLE sleep: 


137 


“ Louise, my child,” cried my father, “ are 
building hats in the air ! ” 

And then the girls all laughed. 

But my mother looked serious. If my father had 
more money than he knew what to do with, she had 
noticed at a shop in New Oxford Street, a merino of 
good serviceable color, and extra width, ‘‘for your 
winter frocks, girls.” And she added gravely, “ It is 
all wool, and a marvellous bargain.” 

Suddenly it had grown dusk, and my father noticed 
that his little son was falling asleep, his head on his 
folded arms among the ruins of the last house of cards. 
“Ah, ah !” said the good man, in joyous tones, “the 
dustman is passing by.” 

That exquisite moment ! I shall never forget it — I, 
that little son, who am now old and grey. My mother 
took me in her arms, and I felt the rough beard of 
my father, and the fresh lips of my three sisters 
pressed in turn on my sleeping brow ; then, with a 
delicious sense of drowsiness, I laid my little head on 
my mother’s shoulder, and I heard confusedly a sweet 
voice, in caressing tones, murmuring close to my ear, 
“ Now it is time to go to by-by house.” 


Twenty years later I had made some success as a 
writer, and was taking a holiday in the country with 
my dear little wife — my little Mary, lovely as a 


138 


SLEEP 0 ENTL E SL EEP. ' 


Madonna of Correggio. We alighted from the station 
omnibus, and deposited our light baggage in the room 
at the little inn, and we laughed, she and T, at the 
bouquet of orange blossoms under a glass shade, at the 
great double bed, and at the tapestry wallpaper, where 
a nabob smoking his chibook on an elephant was 
drawn in wondrous fashion : but when we opened the 
window, looking out on the lovely country, and show- 
ing the forest path green and humid vanishing among 
the chestnut trees, we shouted for joy, we Londoners, 
and, in our enthusiasm, we kissed each other in the 
face of nature. 

And for two days — two summer days, the atmos- 
phere like a Turkish bath, moistened with short 
showers — we lived here, enjoying the woods from 
morning to night, and leaving the window open in 
order that we night be awakened by the nightingales. 
And we were, oh ! so happy that we seemed to forget 
all our past existence, and imagined that we had 
always inhabited that rustic chamber. My pretty 
little wife had given it a home look by throwing her 
parasol at the foot of the bed, and her coquettish hat 
on the glass shade of the orange blossoms. I had 
already been more than once caught by a pretty face, 
but when I met my wife, it was really my first 
serious passion ; she was the first that I had ever truly 
loved. Gentle, reserved, affectionate, with the most 
tender and true eyes in the world, I was madly in 


•‘{SLEEP, GENTLE SLEEP: 


130 


love with her, with her childish talk, with the Avisest 
little serious pout of her lips when she was pensive. 
And she loved me too, and whenever I Avas absent — 
if only for a day— she Avould Avrite me the most 
devoted letters in large ugly Avriting full of sentiment 
and bad spelling. 

For a long time Ave had planned this excursion, and 
had been unable to carry it out, for neither liberty nor 
money Avas always attainable. HoAvever, at length 
the opportunity came, and Ave seized it. We had eaten 
the simple country fare of the inn, and drunk the 
famous home-brewed ale, and slept betAveen coarse 
rustic sheets — very Avhite and very rough ; Ave had 
rambled at Avill through the forest, Avhere Mary had 
gathered and eaten blackberries, and Avhere I, like a 
sylvan shepherd or a shopwalker out for the day, had, 
Avith my penknife, cut my own initials and Mary’s on 
the Avhite bark of a birch. 

But the sweetest moment in all those SAveet hours 
Avas the moment Avhose memory remains fresh in my 
heart Avhen, as an old man, forty years afterwards, I 
am leaning on my stick as I slowly Avalk on the sands 
at Tenby. 

What I refer to took place about eleven o’clock at 
night, the eve of our departure. As it Avas raining 
heavily, Ave had lingered over the kitchen fire, I drying 
my thick country boots, she arranging the bunch of 
wild floAvers she Avas carrying back to London. Then 


] 10 “ SLEEP, GENTLE SLEEP.'* 

we mounted to our room, -where we dawdled for some 
time, laughing as we listened to the lame innkeeper 
shutting the shutters in the basement. At length all 
was silent ; the rain had ceased, and we suddenly felt 
ourselves environed by the great silence and the pro- 
found solitude of a night in the country. Without 
speaking, Mary took the candle, placed it on the 
chimney-piece in front of the dingy, fly-bespecked 
mirror, and began to undress. I, for my part, buried 
myself in a large armchair, and, with legs crossed, 
looked at her in a dreamy state of fatigue and happi- 
ness. 

I recollect her as she gracefully raised to her hair 
her slender arms above her head, and when she saw 
in the glass her young husband smiling at her, she 
smiled back at him. 

How fondly I loved her at that moment, and my 
love was without an atom of base alloy. I was tired 
out, but I think my lassitude made me still more 
tender. In view of the lavender-scented bed with 
the twin pillows, I enjoyed in anticipation the refined 
delight of abandoning myself to her caresses, of bid- 
ding her good-night in a tender embrace, and laying 
my head on that simple heart which beat for me alone. 
And then, seeming to guess my thoughts, she came and 
sat on my knee, threw her arms round my neck, and 
looking closely at me with sweet eyes half closing 
with sleep, said softly, like a child who wants to be 
rocked, and in dreamy tones : 


^‘SLE/iJP, GENTLE SLEEP. 


141 


“ Kow it is time to go to by-by house.” 


I am now growing old. Nay, I am old, for I am in 
my sixtieth year, and my hair is of the shade known 
as pepper and salt.” Then, too, there are crow’s feet 
at the corners of my eyes, and there is little doubt 
that I am now rapidly going down the hill. I have 
still remained true to my first mistress — literature, and 
I am a successful writer of love stories, and a teller of 
dreams. I awoke this morning feeling very unwell, 
and almost immediately I recollected that I was ex- 
pected to go to a funeral. Now, I was much disin- 
clined to go to this funeral, and to pay respect to the 
grave of a man whom, when he was living, I despised. 
Why this hypocrisy ? I asked myself. He was a 
confrere.^ doubtless— what an absurd word ! but a 
curious fellow, and, as unkind persons used to declare, 
easily bought. Still, I had no fault to find with him 
personally. Quite the reverse. Without any in- 
terested motives, this journalist had always shown me 
a courtesy which made me blush. He had praised me 
with tact, and even warmly defended me on occasion. 
If not friends, we were at least comrades. We shook 
hands when we met accidentally in the street and at 
‘‘first nights.” And I made up my mind that, after 
all, the least I could do would be to attend the funeral. 
I owed the dead this atom of respect ; besides we pro- 


142 


••SLEEP, GENTLE sleep: 


fessed the same faith, being both of us Roman Catholics. 
And so on this dismal, rainy November morning I 
shaved and dressed early, and breakfasted hastily, and 
taking a four-wheeled cab, which smelt of damp fogs, 
arrived late at the cliurch, Avhere I found the funeral 
service nearly over. Indeed, the Absolution was just 
being pronounced. I sprinkled myself Avith holy 
Avater, re-entered my cab, and the cortege moved off 
towards a suburban cemetery in the cold, drizzling 
rain. 

Then began the usual lugubrious comedy. People, 
Avho had been cracking jokes all along the road, com- 
posed their features into an expression of seriousness 
or grief, as they stood round the open grave. And 
there Avas his Avife, an antiquated sinner Avhom I had 
known all my life, a Avoman Avho had loathed and 
despised her husband Avhen he Avas alive, but who 
seemed on this occasion to have a ready command 
of tears— tears Avhich seriously interfered Avith her 
cosmetics. 

I had seen enough. I knew that at the conclusion 
I should have to speak to many people Avhom I would 
rather avoid, and so I escaped before the end, and 
hiding behind a magnificent monument erected to the 
memory of a famous haberdasher, I hastened doAvn 
the long path of the cemetery. 

The rain had ceased, but the dark, dirty sky, the 
dead leaves in the mud, the black trees dripping on the 


SLEEP, GENTLE SLEEP. 


143 


tombs, and the terrible wind which sighed and moaned, 
all added to my depression. I felt a sudden and inde- 
scribable distress. I remembered that I was no longer 
young, that my health was indifferent, that my life 
was precarious, and that my envied literary reputation 
was a mere nothing. I told myself that when my 
time should come — and it was bound to come before 
long — there would be a repetition of to-day’s display, 
the same empty pomp, and the same grinning mourn- 
ers in the carriages, chatting on trivial subjects. I 
felt so saturated with sadness and disgust that I posi- 
tively wished that I were dead, that all was over with 
me, and that I could rest here. 

And then, in the wind, which murmured and wailed 
as it bent the willow-trees, I fancied I heard — in 
answer to my thoughts — the words which reminded 
me of the happy episodes in my life, the words which 
I had only heard from my beloved mother and my 
dear, dead wife : 

“ l!^ow, it is time to go to by-by house.” 



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UNLUCKY IN LOVE, LUCKY AT PLAY 


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UNLUCKY IN LOVE, LUCKY AT PLAY. 


Scene : Lawn at Huvlington. Time : A May after- 
noon. Present : The nsual crowds containing 
Mrs. Marmaduke Yernon. She is joined ly Mr. 
Willoughby Trent, of the Foreign Office. 

Mr. Trent. 

Good day, Mrs. Yernon, will you say “How d’ye 
do ” to me ? 

Mrs. Yernon. 

I thought you were in Paris. 

Mr. Trent. 

Be candid, and confess you hoped so. 

Mrs. Yernon. 

I am never rude, even upon invitation. Why did 
you say you were going ? 

Mr. Trent. 

I meant to go. But Vhomme jyro^pose., and the chief of 
his department decides. 

Mrs. Yernon {toying with her sunshade). 

The chief of your department has spoilt a very ex- 
cellent intention ! Young men are so exaggerated 
that one lives in perpetual danger of them making a 
scene. And you especially, my dear boy, if you will 


148 


UNL UCKY m LO YE, L UCKY A T PL A Y. 


allow me to say so, are inclined to take the farce of 
life as if it were blank verse ! 

Mr. Trent. 

You are quite right. And now how is she? 

Mrs. \ {smiling faintly). 

I won’t affect to miss your allusion 

Mr. Trent. 

I mean your daughter. 

Mrs. Yernon. 

My dear child is quite well. {After a pansi). I pre- 
sume you have heard that the ceremony is fixed for the 
fifth of next month ? 

Mr. Trent {going white). 

My God, so soon ! I — I beg your pardon ; I didn’t 
know, and the intelligence was sudden. 

Mrs. Yernon (breahing an uncomfortable silence). 

Come, Mr. Trent, the world isn’t a ruin, after all, 
because one woman has happened to say “no.” You 
must be reasonable, and forget her ! 

Mr. Trent. 

Forget her? It is so easy; I could as soon forget 
that the sun shines. I’ll manage both the things 
together ! 

Mrs. Yernon. 

Take my advice, and get leave, and go away some- 
where ! Change of scene is the best prescription any- 
body could give you. For preference go to Paris as 
you had arranged. {Rises). I must say “ au revoir ” 


UNL UCKT IN LO VE, L XJCK7 A T PLA T. 


149 


now ; I see Lady Clanricarde over there, and I want 
to speak to her. By -bye ! {Goes). 

(Sir George Todhunter a^proaehes^ accoynpanied hy 
the Hon. Mr. Sparkington). 

Sir George. 

He told me so himself — I have it on his own 
authority. 

Mr. Sparkington. 

Well, it’s only a couple of months ago since 
Yandeleur pere came down with the “ oof,” and gave 
him a fresh start ! Hullo, Trent, my boy, how do 
you carry yourself ? 

Mr. Trent. 

How are you ? What’s that you were saying about 
Eustace Yandeleur, Sir George ? 

Sir George. 

Saying he’s pretty considerably dipped again! — 
came a cropper over Reredos, and has to fork out 
three thou or be posted at Tattersall’s. Beastly mess, 
by Jove, and any scandal would queer his marriage 
with the Yernon girl ! Her people wouldn’t let her 
have him if there were anything of that kind ; his 
governor had to clear him before ; old Yernon wouldn’t 
listen to him — kept changing the conversation, and 
Yan couldn’t get in his “I love your daughter, sir,” 
sideways ! 


150 UNL UGKY IN LO YE, L UGKT A T PL A T. 


Me. Spakkington. 

Well, his governor won’t “part” any more, I sup- 
pose — about worked dry ! What’s Yandeleur going 
to do? 

Sir George. 

He’s all right ! Got a maiden aunt — some fellows 
have ! — aunt who lives in Cornwall. Aunt’s promised 
him five thousand on the nail as soon as he marries 
and settles down. Told me yesterday he w^as just 
going to see her and say the day was fixed, and draw 
the “ ready.” It’ll just put him straight. But dev’lish 
hard lines, you know ; he expected to be able to have 
some fun when he got it, and now he’s got to pay it 
all away to other fellows ! 

Mr. Sparkington. 

I pity Miss Yernon; she won’t be happy with an 
improvident beggar like that ! It would be a jolly 
good thing for her — though she wouldn’t think so at 
present — if the maiden aunt had removed to Jericho, 
and the crash came before the marriage took place. 
It’s bound to come some time ! 

Sir George. 

By the way, Trent, weren’t you rather ej>ris in that 
quarter yourself a while ago ? 

Mr. Trent intense astonishment). 

I? 


Sir George. 

Hang it, I’m sure you were! 


UNL JJCKY IN LO VE, L UGKY A T PLA Y, 


151 


Mr. Trent. 

If you are silre, why ask ? 

Sir George. 

Oh, apologies, no end ! Wasn’t aware it was a sore 
point, or wouldn’t have prodded it. 

Mr. Trent. 

You mistake me, quite. Well, ta-ta, you fellows. 
I’m here with a party — if I can find them. {Tmms 
sharply and strolls away). 

Mr. Sparkington. 

You shouldn’t chaff him, Todhunter: it was serious, 
and he’s awfully down on his luck about her. 

Sir George. 

Poor chap, I didn’t know. 

Mr. Sparkington {thoughtfully). 

I’ve sometimes wondered she didn’t take a fancy to 
him instead of the other. He’s earnest, and steady : 
and I believe he’s got two or three thousand pounds 
that somebody left him, too ! 

Sir George. 

But Yandeleur’s good-looking, and amusing: and 
she’s only a girl. Come and watch the polo ! 

{Exeunt). 


152 UNL UCK7 IN LO VE, L UCKT A T PL A 7, 

SCENE: Captain Grahame’s rooms in Half-Moon 
Street. Time : Midnight. Guests : Mr. Somerset, 
Lord Dagmar, Mr. Willoughby Trent, and the 
Hon. Eustace Yandeleur. Poker going mi — the 
host making the fifth. 

Lord Dagmar. 

My deal : pass the cards ! 

Mr. Trent. 

I make it a tenner blind. 

Captain Grahame. 

Twenty to play ! I say, you know, this is gambling, 
and nothing less ! 

Mr. Trent. 

Must give the losers a chance, old man. 

Captain Grahame. 

I don’t like to see fellows drop such a lot over a 
friendly ‘‘flutter! ” You’ve been rushing the game all 
night, Trent. 

Mr? Yandeleur {thickly). 

I am the only heavy sufferer, and I’m satisfied, so 
nobody need complain, Grahame. Whoever doesn’t 
like it needn’t “come in.” {Crosses to sideboard and 
mixes himself another B. and S.) 

Mr. Trent. 

As Mr. Yandeleur has said ! 

Captain Grahame. 

Oh, just as you all please, of course : I’ve no wish to 
spoil the fun. {Thinks). Never knew Trent to play 


UNL UGKY m LO VE, L UGKY .1 T PL A Y. 


153 


as he’s playing ta-night in my life — doesn’t look as if 
he’s been drinking either. Can’t make out ^Yhat he 
means. 

(Lord Dagmar deals. Everyone looks at his cards, 
and the dealer and Captain Grahame decline to “ come 
m).” 

Mr. Somerset. 

I’m there. 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

I make it forty to play. 

Mr. Trent. 

Oh, very well. 

Mr. Somerset. 

I suppose I must follow my twenty quid? Yes. 

Mr. Trent. 

One card please. 

Mr. Somerset. 

Two for me. 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

And one. It’s you to bet, Trent. 

Mr. Trent. 

Forty to play ? I double. 

Lord Dagmar (imwardly). 

Go it, my son ! 

Mr. Somerset. 

I’ll call that. 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

You are always such an inquisitive Johnnie, Somer- 


154 


UNL UCKT m LO VE, L UCET A T PL A Y. 


set, it’s quite refreshing to baulk you. I make it a 
liundred and sixty. 

Captain Grahame (in a murmur to Lord Dagmar). 
Yandeleur’s got something good there; he’s let his 
cigarette out. 

Mr. Trent (quietly). 

Double again. 

Mr. Somerset ('pitching his cards a'way 'with alac7dty). 
Thanks ! Kot for this child ! 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

Six hundred and forty. 

Mr. Trent (with a slight tremor in his voice). 
Double ! What does that make it ? 

Captain Grahame. 

Twelve-eighty. (In a whisper to Lord Dagmar). I 
am sure Trent can’t alford this : look at his face ! 

Mr. Yandeleur (^ery white amidst a dead silence). 
And double ! 

(Pause, wherein Trent’s hands shake, and he breathes 
with difficulty). 

Mr. Yandeleur (Jioarsely). 

I said, “ And double ” Mr. Trent. Do you call ? 

Mr. Trent i^ith his hand to his heart). 

No, I “raise” you! But I won’t “double” this 
time ; I’ll make it even money — five thousand 
pounds. 

Mr. Yandeleur {]iis self-control deserting him). 
Five thousand pounds? — if I lose that, it means 


UNLUCKY IN LOVE, LUCKY AT PLAY. 155 


Mr.. Trent. 

Exactly. So I understand ! 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

Five thousand pounds? You play a very interest- 
ing game, Mr. Trent ; I begin to see what it is. 

Lord Dagmar. 

Well, cut compliments, Yandeleur. Do you “ call ” 
that five thousand pounds ? 

Mr. Yandeleur {moistens his lijps, hesitates., and 
answers with ajerh). 

Yes ! What have you got ? 

Mr. Trent. 

A straight fiush. 

Mr. Yandeleur. 

So have I ! 

Omnes. 

Good God ! 

Mr. Trent. 

Queen high ! 

Mr. Yandeleur {in another marCs voice). 
M-mine is only to the knave. 

Captain Grahame {veri/ husky). 

The money’s yours, Trent. Why, what’s up, old 
fellow — ill ? 

(Mr. Trent utters a gurgling sob that sounds like 
Sylvia^'* and falls across the table dead., with his hand 
ujpon the winning cards). 







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OF COURSE. 



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OF COURSE. 


“ It was awfully sad, Jemima,’^ said Lily. 

Jemima put down her plain needlework — Jemima 
rarely did embroidery — and nodded. 

“Very,” she answered. ‘‘You were such a child at 
the time that you can’t remember much about it. 
But if ever two people loved each other in this world, 
Harold and Dora did. It was cruel.” 

“ She was your favorite sister, wasn’t she ? ” 

“I think she was,” said Jemima; ‘‘you were almost 
a baby, you know, and she was the one nearest my 
own age.” 

Lily tossed her novel on to the table — Lily rarely 
inclined to sewing — and crossed her pretty hands in 
her lap. 

“ Tell me about it,” she said, peremptorily. “ Love 
stories from the life are so much more thrilling than 
made-up ones. We were all rich then, and Dora was 
beautiful, and you, Jemima, were the same old dear 
that you are now — go on.” 

“We were all rich,” murmured the elder girl 
obediently; “it was twelve years ago, and I was 
twenty-three.” 


160 


OF COURSE. 


“Only twenty-three? Oh, but, of course — and yet, 
do you know, you seemed quite old to me in those 
days, too.” 

“ Some of us are born old,” said Jemima, with a 
little pain in her voice, “/am one of them, I suppose. 
I was twenty-three, and Dora was the age that you 
are now — twenty-one, and quite as lovely. If you 
want to know how she looked, go to the mirror — she 
had just your face.” 

Lily smiled. We are vain at one-and-twenty, and a 
heroine who looks like us is interesting. “Do get 
on ! ” she said, complacently. 

“We did not see many men, for all we were well- 
off,” pursued the other. “ The town was a very quiet 
one, and father was ailing already. I do not remember 
the reason of Harold Ain she coming there, but I 
know that he came one day, and that he made many 
visits afterwards. Dora was away — staying with 
some people, so that at first he did not meet her. He 
only saw me and you.” 

“ I wonder,” said the listener, “ that it wasn’t with 
you he fell in love. You must have been pretty 
once.” 

There was a knot in Jemima’s cotton that stopped 
her speech a moment. She bent her head over it. 

“ There was never a man like him,” she continued : 
“ he was popular with every one. And not what is 
called a ‘ladies’ man, not a fop, but a real manly 


OF COURSE. 


161 


man. His eyes were grey, and he carried himself like 
a soldier ; and his voice — everybody noticed his voice 
— it was so grave and tender, lie was in a business 
house at quite a small salary ; but you would never 
have guessed him in commerce to look at him. As I 
say, he had the air of a soldier.” 

“I should have liked Harold,” said Lily medita- 
tively. “ I wonder if he has changed ! ” 

“When I)ora came home, fell in love with her 
at once. And she with him. They used to go out 
walking together, while his holiday lasted ; and he 
used to bring her songs, and practise her accompani- 
ments. On one pretence or another they were to- 
gether all the time. I shall never forget the night she 
told me that he had asked her to be his wife, and 
that she had promised she would wait for him. She 
was so happy — we cried in each other’s arms ! ” 

“ What a funny way of showing one’s happiness ! ” 
said Lily. “ And why should you have cried ? ” 

“ I told her, with all my soul, that I was glad for 
her. I said she could never find a man more worthy. 
I spoke the honest truth — I loved her dearly.” 

“ You dear old Jemima — what a sentimental goose 
you are ! ” 

“ They had been engaged a year when Harold was 
offered an appointment in India. They had been en- 
gaged, and it had seemed as if things would never 
improve with him enough for them to marry. Dora 


162 


OF COURSE. 


was miserable at the prospect of the separation ; but 
it meant so much, that post abroad — who could dis- 
suade him from accepting it? Not I certainly. I 
said : ‘Go! and trust me to look after Dora in your 
absence ! ’ lie called me his ‘ sister,’ and kissed my 
forehead ” 

“ Don’t keep stopping ! ” begged Lily. 

“And sailed a month later to make a fortune, and 
win a wife. Don’t stir the fire, Lily — my head aches.” 

“ It’s so dark.” 

“It was dark for Dora. Those first weeks after 
he sailed, and no letters could come from him, my 
heart ached to see her. But then news began to arrive 
from him ; he was well, and contented. He thought 
there was a big opening in the firm where he was. 

‘ Be patient,’ he wrote, ‘ and in a little while I shall 
be able to ask you to come out and marry me, my 
darling.’ She had just been taken ill when that letter 
came. By the next mail she was dead.” 

The fire shot up into a sudden flame. Jemima’s 
eyes were humid, and Lily was listening with an 
attentive smile. 

“ I wrote and told him — I have his answer now ! 
I wrote him in reply, and so the correspondence began 
between us — the correspondence that has lasted more 
than eleven years. The grief died out of his letters 
by degrees, but he never forgot us — he has never 
.married — and he always sent his remembrances to 


OF COURSE. 


163 


you, ‘ the baby ’ as we used to call you when he went 
away. Each step that he has taken I have heard of ; 
as he built his fortune, so I knew.” 

“And now he is coming home — a rich nlan,” Lily 
murmured; “Jemima, do you know what would be 
the most natural thing in the world ? ” 

“ What ? ” asked Jemima. 

“ That you two should become man and wife, and 
have a swagger carriage and pair, and take me driv- 
ing in the Park.” 

“ Don’t,” exclaimed Jemima with a curious kind of 
laugh. “ Do you mind, dear, if I take my needlework, 
and finish it in the next room ? — it makes such a litter 
here ! ” 


There were two persons in the shabby parlor again, 
but one of them was Harold Ainslie. 

“You really knew me?” asked the man. 

. “You aren’t so changed,” replied the woman. 

He laughed ruefully. 

“You have got used to me by now, Jemima. My 
hair is grey~I feel different to myself. Think what 
a long time it is ! ” 

“Yes,” said Jemima, “it is a long time.” 

“India takes it out of one, it makes England seem 
queer when one is back. The ^Harold’ who went 
away, and the ‘Harold’ who has returned— what a 
gap between them ! ” 


164 


OF COURSE. 


“ It changes us all in some things,’’ said the woman 
thoughtfully. “We are all older, of course.” 

“ I should have known he said. “ I knew you 
at once — it was your sister who made me feel Methu- 
selah. She was a child, and now she reminds me of 
what I am anxious to forget.” 

“ A man’s age is nothing — he is as old as he feels.” 

“ Methuselah —I said it ? ” 

“ When his feelings aren’t absurd ! ” Jemima added. 
“When you have been home six months, instead of 
two, you will have grown acclimatized.” 

Harold Ainslie looked at her meditatively, and 
pulled his long moustache. 

“ Are you as good a friend to me as ever ? ” he 
queried. 

“ I hope so,” she said. 

“ Eemember, once you were a very good friend — my 
adviser, you were going to be my sister. We were 
fond of each other, Jemima.” 

Jemima nodded. 

“ Are you willing to like me as much again — to be 
as much to me ? I have something to ask you — and I 
am afraid.” 

The woman’s face was pale. “ It is about Lily ? ” 
she said slowly. 

“Yes,” he answered, “it is about Lily. She is 
such a great deal younger than I am, and it seems 
half wrong. If you think so ” 


OF COURSE. 


165 


What does she think? ” inquired Jemima. 

“ She thinks she loves me,” i‘eplied Mr. Ainslie ; “ she 
thinks the disparity may be condoned. I said I would 
ask your consent this evening — that is why she is not 
here; that is why I have come. Jemima, she is like 
Dora come back to welcome me — will you let me take 
her ? ” 

There was a moment’s silence. Both looked out at 
the darkening street in reverie. It was very quiet. 
Only the steps of the lamplighter beat on the stillness 
as he pursued his “ round,” and in the violet twilight 
the gas-jets sprang redly into life. The door-bell 
jangled, announcing Lily’s return. Her feet ran gaily 
up the stairs. 

‘‘ Will you let me take her ? ” the man repeated. 

Jemima gave him her hand. 


“ And it is all so lovely, Jemima,” said Lily with a 
laugh of joy ; “ it seems like Providence, doesn’t it ? 
He will be your brother after all — just as you used to 
wish ! ” 



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LOVE AND MONEY. 


SCENE ; The Colossus Cluh^ Tall Mall. Deamatis 
Persons : Several memhers behind periodicals 
and cigars., and., in a chair by a window.. Lord 
Lackland, to whom enters his father., The Most 
Noble The Marquis of Scantmoney. 

ScANTMONEY. 

Ah, there you are, my dear fellow! I thought I 
should find you, and I drove here straight from 
Yictoria. 

Lackland. 

So you’ve deserted the salubrious Eastbourne 
already ? 

Scantmoney. 

Temporarily, Gerald — for a day or so. The duties 
of paternity are paramount, and it is my interest in 
your welfare that brings me to town. 

Lackland. 

I beg your pardon ? 

Scantmoney {irritably). 

I said “ my interest in your welfare.” Do you find 
it astonishing ? 

Lackland. 

Gratifying, I assure you. You were going to 
observe ? 


170 


LOVE AND MONEY. 


SCANTMONEY. 

A great deal more than I want those idiots to over- 
hear, so we will lower our voices if you please. 
Gerald, the grand chance we have been waiting for 
has come — I knew it directly I was introduced to 
them. I lost no time in putting you on the scent ; 
and, by heaven, you ought to say a thanksgiving 
to me! 

Lackland. 

I’ll be hanged, my dear governor, if I know what 
you are talking about. 

ScANTMONEY. 

Good God, man, haven’t I been looking out for an 
heiress for you for the last three years ? Haven’t we 
said over and over again that the only thing for you 
was to marry money? I tell you your chance has 
come now. She is an American — therefore you hold 
the ace of trumps. If you only play your title with 
decent intelligence, her millions are won. 

Lackland. 

“ Millions ” is a figure of speech, I presume ? What 
is she like ? 

ScANTMONEY. 

Millions of dollars, I mean. To tell you the truth I 
don’t know what she’s like. 

Lackland {staring). 

I thought you said you were introduced ? 


LOVE AND MONEY, 


m 


SCANTMONEY. 

I was. But I don’t know which she is, and I can’t 
meet anybody who does. 

Lackland. 

‘‘Which?” 

ScANTMONEY. 

Which of the two! Don’t get irritable, and I’ll 
explain myself. {Leans forward and jpunctaaies his 
sentences ivith his right forefinger on his left i)alm hy 
way of eniphasis). The case is this : There are two 
Avomen, aunt and niece, both unmarried, both orphans, 
both named “ Doyle.” They come from “out west” 
— exact place of manufacture unknown. The niece. 
Miss Sadie Doyle, is charming ; the aunt, Miss Priscilla 
Doyle, is bony, elderl}^ and wears a false “front.” 
For reasons of their own they are silent as to whom 
the fortune belongs, and you will have to make it 
3^our business to discover the possessor before you 
commit yourself. 

Lackland. 

I have discovered ; it is the old one — it always is ! 

ScANTMONEY (airily). 

This may be an exception. Anyhow there is an 
adage, my dear boy, to the effect that beggars cannot 
be choosers. 

Lackland (thmhs). 

Cool, considering it’s his own extravagance that has 
placed me in the position ! 


172 


LOVE AND MONEY, 


SCANTMONEY. 

Of course you will go down with me at once ? 

Lackland. 

I suppose so. {Suddenly explodes into langhter). 
Seems quite a pity you’re not a widower, doesn’t it ? 
You might have finessed on your own account — you’ve 
got so much more talent for this kind of thing than I ! 

ScANTMONEY. 

Ah ! I shall have to leave you as soon as I’ve assisted 
you to gain your footing. Y^our dear mother has 
another of her attacks of religious melancholia, and, 
Avith her usual selfishness, insists upon my returning to 
Scantmoney Towers to share it with her. Besides I 
must see Levison before the end of the month. For 
mercy’s sake don’t let there be any blunder ! 

Lackland. 

Y^ou needn’t be alarmed ; I’m not quite an ass. 

Scantmoney {rising complacently^. 

No, my dear Gerald, and you’re not a bad-looking 
fellow either — in both of which particulars it has been 
said with some truth that you take after me. How- 
ever — shall we go ? 

{Exeunt a/rin in arm). 


LOVE AND MONEY. 


173 


TIME : Three weeks later. Scene : Secluded corner 
of the Eastbourne Pier. Occupants : Miss Sadie 
Doyle aiid Lord Lackland. 

Miss Doyle. 

Yes, you’re quite right, I am very fond of auntie; 
I have every cause to be. But I don’t know what 
would have become of me if it hadn’t been for her. 

Lackland {with great interest). 

Indeed ? {Thinks). The very first word I’ve heard 
which lets me behind the scenes ! It looks confoundedly 
as if the elderly one had the dollars — and just my luck ! 
Miss Doyle {engrossed by the carving of her sunshade 
handle). 

I owe her so much. She has saved me from worse 
than poverty. 

Lackland {thinks). 

The girl’s got nothing. There’s not a doubt about 
it — none, at all. {G7'oans). Fifty if she’s a day, and 
looks it. Oh, Lord ! 

Miss Doyle. 

Perhaps you wonder at my speaking so frankly of 
myself, but I think it is only right that you should 
know what a dear good soul she is. You don’t appre- 
ciate auntie. 

Lackland {to himself). 

Their expenditure would be unwarrantable under 
ten thousand a year. I must be a lunatic to hesitate ! 
And yet— I don’t think I ever saw such eyelashes with 


174 


LOVE AND MONET. 


quite such an upward curl before, or a nose so divinely 
delicate ! 

[Pause^ wherein Sadie gazes at the sea^ and Lackland 
looks morosely at he}\ gnavnng his moustache). 

Miss Doyle {resuming abruptly., and with a slight 
ti'emor in her voice). 

I had a fancy to say this to you to-day, Lord 
Lackland, because to-morrow we leave for the Conti- 
nent. 'Not that it was important, certainly ! 

Lackland. 

To-morrow ! Is that so ! {Thinks savagely). I’m a 
blank fool, and nothing else. I ought to be kicked. 
{Aloud). Your intention is very sudden. Miss Doyle. 

Miss Doyle. 

It was sudden, or I should have told you before. 

Lackland. 

Do you know — I am thinking of running over to 
the Continent in a week or two. May I hope to be 
fortunate enough to meet you ? 

Miss Doyle. 

I don’t think it very likely. We are going out of 
the beaten track, auntie and I. In fact. Lord Lackland, 
it will be good-bye for an unknown period. 

Lackland {}o himself feverishly). 

If only she had the money ! If only she didn’t make 
my head swim whenever I look at her! If — oh, I 
wish to Heaven I were back in Pall Mall, and the last 
few weeks were all a dream — that is to say I ought 
to wish it ! 


LOVE AND MONEY, 


175 


Miss Doyle. 

I say “ an unknown period ’’ because it is probable 
we shall go home — to the other side, I mean — in a few 
months. If we do — Avell then, you and I aren’t likely 
to meet again at all. 

Lackland {mentally^ with a lump in his throat), 

Kot meet again at all — not meet again at — It’s 
no good, I can’t stand it ! (Suddenly seizes her hand 
and speahs very quickly,) Listen to me — Sadie ! I’m a 
penniless duffer, hampered by a title and an idiotic 
pride which has prevented me trying to earn an 
honest independence. But I love yon, darling, upon 
my soul I do ! And if you’ll trust yourself to me, I’ll 
— by the Lord, I’ll work for you, gladl}'- and proudly, 
and if you ever know an hour’s repentance it sha’n’t 
be from any fault of mine. 

Miss Doyle. 

Gerald ! 

Lackland {breathing hard). 

Wait a moment before you answer ; that isn’t all. 
I’ve a confession to make which may alter it a bit. 
Sadie, until I fell in love with you, and found a 
mercenary marriage impossible, I was neither more 
nor less than a fortune hunter. 

Miss Doyle. 

I think I know all you could tell me — and I forgive. 

^ Lackland. 

I came down here to learn which Miss Doyle was 
the heiress, and to win her if I could. 


176 


LOVE AND MONEY. 


Miss Doyle (softly). 

And you have succeeded — she is won. 

Lackland (stupefied). 

What — what did you say ? 

Miss Doyle. 

That on auntie’s suggestion I tested you, and found 
you were worthy of respect and love. I only spoke 
the truth when I said I owed her much. 

Lackland (ecstatically). 

Sadie, sweet ! (Interval of several seconds). Don’t 
you think the Continent will keep ? 

Miss Doyle. 

Till we go together ? 

Lackland (with his lips on her glove). 

For just a month. 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 



A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


SiK John Chetwynd was a physician whose 
baronetcy was three years old. When the title was 
conferred on him he had raised the fee for his 
matutinal minutes from one guinea to three— except- 
ing in the case of a former patient, to whom he always 
said stiffly : “ No, no, my dear sir, not to 3^011,” — and 
affixed a new plate to the door, chronicling his 
dignity. 

Beyond these differences, and the increased respect 
of his footman, the pleasure of his sovereign made 
little change in the life of John Chetwynd. He was 
a man with a dry manner, and a bearing that brought 
the consulting-room into the club, and he had 
accepted his good fortune as he had taken his bad : like 
one who cared nothing for either. When, ten years 
before, his wife had bolted, and he obtained his 
divorce, people said he was hurt in his pride, and no- 
where else. He had long since dropped out of touch 
with the Bohemians who had drank bottled porter at 
his wedding, and among the acquaintances of John 
Chetwynd, of Camelot Square, the practitioner was 
held to be a much better doctor than a fellow. 

He had been “Jack” Chetwynd, not so very long 


180 


A DOG Toil IN DIFFICULTIES. 


out of his student-days, on the night he went to a 
minor music-hall, and fell in love with Miss Bella 
Blackall doing a song and dance. She • was barely 
seventeen, and it was her girlishness that charmed 
him, though he called it her talent. Then, too, she 
had an air of refinement, and appealing eyes that 
seemed to his fancy to protest against the vulgarity of 
her surroundings. He adjourned to the bar, and 
raved about her to his companion, and swore he could 
discern the stuff that meant an actress in her, and 
prophesied she was going to rise, and play Juliet at 
the “ Haymarket.” He was still at the age whose 
habit it is to discover genius in unlikely places, 
especially when the women are pretty. 

He returned to the “ Bandbox ” the next night, and 
the night after ; and by and by he got himself intro- 
duced to her. She lived with a black-satined-and- 
beaded mother in a lodging off the Waterloo Road, 
and he used to go there to tea, and — when the affair 
])rogressed — take her back to supper after her per- 
formance — suppers of his purchase, acquired on the 
way. 

Then it was understood that he was engaged to her ; 
and the hilarious mother, and the very professional 
sister, who was a stout and common version of his 
darling, wished him happiness, and said that Bella was 
a good girl (which she was) and born to lead a private 
life — which she wasn’t. 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES, 


181 


She had been bred in the atmosphere of the “ Halls,” 
though she was too inexperienced to have distinguished 
herself in them, and by degrees she commenced to 
find the retirement dull. To do her justice, the 
degrees were nearly as slow as the retirement, but 
Jack changed too as the years slipped past, albeit he 
was steadfast enough in his affection for her. The gay 
young practitioner “got on,” and with success a good 
deal of his gayety vanished. He said they must be 
respectable, and that it “ wouldn’t do for him to be 
seen ” in this place or the other. Bella thought it was 
much jollier when they could go where they liked 
without it mattering. She found him less demonstra- 
tive, less congenial. He aged rapidly and looked an 
elderly man while she was a very young woman. 
The evolution of Jack into John had begun. In the 
honeymoon she had often broken into a step-dance 
while he shouted the accompaniment; but now if in a 
rare visit to the theatre her foot tapped the time in a 
refrain she felt him wince. 

And at last the inevitable came. The blow fell on 
John Chetwynd a few months after they had moved 
into the big house in Camelot Square, when his career 
had reached what seemed to him its apex ; for a bar- 
onetcy in those days was as distant from his expecta- 
tions as Camelot Square had been in the period of the 
Waterloo Eoad. His wife left him; turned her 
shapely back on the apotheosis of respectability for a 


182 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


life of excitement and the protection of the man who 
had persuaded her to go. 

To the stupefied husband the disaster was well-nigh 
incredible. To the few who knew the facts, and had 
laughed for years over Mrs. Chetwynd’s secret ex- 
cursions to her sister’s dressing-rooms, almost the only 
astonishing feature of the scandal was that it had not 
occurred before. 

The one thing people found surprising was the 
“ callousness” with which he took it. During the 
weeks of publicity his waiting-room was besieged. 
Feminine patients flocked to him, wide-eyed in scru- 
tiny, martyrs to symptoms discovered for the occasion. 
And over all the teacups the verdict was the same ; 
such indifference was a “ positive sin.” 

It had been in a club that the earliest intimation 
had reached him of the divorcee’s return to tlie boards. 
A young fellow to whom he was personally unknown 
had stretched himself behind a newspaper and 
yawned : 

“ Bella Blackall? Bella Blackall? Wasn’t that the 
name of Chetwynd’s wife, somebody ? She’s on at the 
‘ Koyal,’ I see.” 

“ Yes, Bella Blackall was the name of my wife,” 
J ohn Chetwynd had answered. “ She used to be rather 
a clever dancer, too.” 

‘‘ Brute ! ” the other had observed, in recounting 
his confusion to a chum. ‘‘ He never turned a grizzled 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


183 


hair ; I give you my word I felt worse over the thing 
than he did ! ” 

But these contretemps were comparatively few. She 
had gone to America soon afterwards, and since that 
time there had been a cessation of the newspaper 
advertisements, which he had carefully avoided, and 
of her picture on the boardings, which he could not 
escape. The affair was old — forgotten, in long inter- 
vals, by the man himself. In the ten years that had 
passed since the decree nisi was made absolute he had 
heard nothing from her. He was now Sir John 
Chetvvynd, Bart. ; grayer, and stiffer, and more med- 
ically precise. 

Then he saw her again. 

It was one morning; a patient had just slipped 
the papered guineas into his hand, and been bowed 
out 

“ Anybody else, Soames ? ” 

‘‘A lady, Sir John, without an appointment; she 
has been waiting more than an hour.” 

“ Show her in ! ” 

She entered as the man announced her: “Miss 
Blackall!” 

The name and face struck the physician simultane- 
ously. He started, but recovered himself again in the 
next instant. 

“ Take a seat, madam.” 

He waved her to a chair, and for several minutes 
they looked at each other without speaking. 


184 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


“ I have come back,” she said with a nervous laugh. 
“ I want you to prescribe for me ! ” 

He was standing, and he did not answer. He was 
aware she looked ill, and handsome, and was expen- 
sively dressed. There was something strange in the 
very familiarity of the countenance presented to him 
again. It had altered much from what he remem- 
bered it ; and curiously enough he remembered the 
more vividly for the sight of the alteration. 

“What do you complain of?” he asked huskily. 
“ Why have you consulted me f ” 

“ It’s my lungs,” she replied ; “ I don’t know, I sup- 
pose it was a whim. I thought you’d do me good if 
anyone can.” She paused a second. “ You used to be 
my husband once ! ” 

“Once,” he said. “Well, I am willing to be your 
doctor.” 

“ You will sound me ? ” 

“ Loosen your dress.” 

Her fingers when she drew off her gloves, had 
many rings upon them— rings he had not given to her. 
His breath came a little faster as he stooped over her 
neck. 

“ Don’t be scared to tell the truth,” she said; “ I 
guess I’m pretty bad! You needn’t take the trouble 
to lie about it.” 

He examined her thoroughly, and replaced the 
stethoscope before he spoke. 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


185 


“ Your lungs are not right,” he told her ; “ they 
used to be ! ” 

‘‘ Oh,” she said, ‘‘ I used to be. Am I going to die, 
is that V7hat you mean ? ” 

“ I mean you have got to be very careful. Go to 
Italy or the South of France — don’t stay in London.” 

“ I’ve only just come over from the States. I’ve 
got to stay ! ” 

“You will be very unwise.” 

“Beggars can't be choosers. I’ve a contract at the 
‘ Empire’ for three months.” 

He sighed : “You don’t look like a beggar.” 

“ Oh, I make money easy enough, but it melts like 
ice-cream ; everything is so beastly dear ! Anyhow 
I'm obliged to you for being fair with me ; I thought 
you would be ! You — you haven’t said whether you’re 
sorry to see me or not. But you are, of course. 
You’re a baronet now, eh ? I read about it in The 
Herald. Scot, I’d have been ‘ Lady Chetwynd ’ if I’d 
stopped, wouldn’t I ? ” 

She sank back into the chair again, and began to 
re-button her bodice. 

“ Have you,” said Sir John, “have you — it’s a fool- 
ish question, but have you ever regretted ?” 

“ Oh,” she exclaimed, “ as far as that goes — what’s 
the use of looking back, anyhow ! I’ve been sorry, 
and I haven’t, and when I’ve took sick it’s been 
mighty lonesome. But you were always a good fel- 


186 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


low, I’ll say that ; I know it better than I used to, 
now I’ve had so — since I’ve been ” 

“Are you with Mm f ” said Sir John wearily. 

“Him?” she said. “Him? — Oh! I think he’s 
dead ; I believe he died years ago ! W ell, I’m glad to 
have seen yoii, again, that’s a fact. I guess I sha’n’t 
meet you any more, shall I ? Unless you come and 
see me ? ” 

“ That would, I think, be very distressing for us 
both.” He put out his hand, and she squeezed it. 

“Good-bye,” she said; “there’s the address, if you 
should take a notion to come. It’s only a three 
months’ engagement over here, but I guess I ain’t long 
for this wicked world at all. Say ‘ Bella’ for the sake 
of old times ? ” 

“Good-bye — Bella,” said Sir John, as he sounded 
the signal for the door. 

It was not for an hour after the interview that he 
quitted the room. He remained thinking of the woman 
as she had been when he married her. He re-lived 
the period of their courtship, with its hand-clasps in 
omnibuses, its cheap, impromptu suppers, and all the 
prettiness that time had turned into shame. He 
thought of his love for her, and of the years of misery 
that no one had suspected. She had forgotten a scrap 
of lace on the table — for her throat, off her veil — God 
knows what ! He picked it up and held it before his 
eyes, and they were cloudy, so that his sight of the 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


187 


lace was blurred, while his vision of the past was 
clear. He repeated mentally phrases that had fallen 
from her ; piecing them together, and trying to weave 
the pattern of her life out of the fragments. She had 
changed pathetically. She had. acquired the manner 
that her sister used to have — the slangy, devil-ma}^- 
care tone, whose absence in the old time had made 
his sweetheart so conspicuously different to her environ- 
ment. And she wore the impress of evil from her 
Kegent Street hat to her Paris gown. Manifestly she 
had risen in her vocation, but he knew that her 
salary alone had never supplied the costume and the 
rings. 

The idea of seeing her again did not cross his mind 
for some days, but then it fastened on him. He 
excused his temptation by the condition of her health, 
though he was aware that this was not sufficiently 
critical to serve for a reason. The indecision continued 
for several weeks. Twice he seized his hat with the 
intention of going to her, and put it back, being angry 
with himself for his weakness. The address she had 
given him was in one of the streets that run off the 
Strand to the Embankment, and at last — it was on a 
Sunda}^ — he chanced to be close by. The impulse 
gripped him, and was stronger than himself. He 
glanced at his watch ; it was one o’clock. He thought 
that he might find her. 

He knocked at the door nervously ; his tongue was 
heavy as he asked if she was there. 


188 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICVLTIES. 


“Til see,” said the servant; “what name?” 

He hesitated. Then: “Sir John Chetwynd,”. he 
answered firmly; and was left to contemplate the 
passage while she went upstairs. 

He heard the name repeated by her loudly : “ Sir 
John Chetwynd — will you see him?” and sickened 
at her tone, and what the familiarity implied. 

“ Come up, please.” 

She signed to him from the half-landing. He 
followed her into a first-floor sitting-room which she 
had evidently been engaged in sweeping, for a brush 
and dustpan were lying on the floor. 

“ Miss Blackall isn’t up. Is he to go in ? ” 

He saw a partially-opened door communicating 
with a bedroom, and a voice replied in the aflirmative. 
On entering, he could discern little ; the curtains 
were drawn, and it was almost dark. 

Momentarily only Bella’s face was clear. 

“ You have come, then,” she said listlessly. “ Here, 
sit down.” 

“ Are you ill ? ” he asked. “ Worse ? ” 

“ I don’t feel up to much. Ho, I’m not worse, I’m 
going back on Wednesday ; the Empire people have 
let me off.” 

She turned her head restlessly upon the pillow, her 
hands, still with the rings on them, drooped over the 
sheet. 

“ It was good of you to come ! ” she said. 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


189 


“ Oh,” he answered, “ that’s nothing.” And for some 
minutes neither said any more. He sat at the foot of 
the bed, and looked vaguely into the slant of the 
room bej^ond. The girl had resumed her sweeping, 
and he could see her kneeling in the sunshine by the 
chiffonier, on which was a basket of peaches — at this 
season an extravagance denied to his own table — a 
penny packet of stationery and a powder-puff in a 
sprinkling of chalk. 

“Well?” she stretched down her arm, so that her 
fingers touched him, and he held them for an instant, 
rings and all ; “ haven’t you got anything to say ? ” 

“ Tell me about yourself,” he sighed ; “ do you — 
are you in debt ? ” 

“ I’m all right.” 

“ Are you — alone ? ” 

She made a gesture. “ What do you ask for ; don’t 
you feel bad enough ? ” 

“ Tell me,” he urged. 

“ I didn’t come alone, but he’s in Paris. We crossed 
together from Hew York. There’s a portmanteau 
belonging touhim underneath here now.” 

“ Bella ! ” groaned Sir John. 

“Yes,” she murmured, “yes — I know? Oh!” she 
broke off fretfully, calling to the servant, “ are you 
going to bang round there all day ! You, what’s- 
your-name, go away, and send me my maid. Ho, don’t 
send her, only go away. You are killing me with 
your noise I ” 


A DOCTOR IN DIFFICULTIES. 


190 


‘‘Bella, Bella!” 

“ I wish I was dead ! ” she exclaimed. “ Nobody’d 
care, and I’m sick of it all ! There, don’t bother, I 
get on right enough, only I’m not well and they worry 
me, and — oh, I wish to God, I’d run straight. Jack ! 
I don’t think I was meant for this, do you ? ” 

He got up and strode to the window, parting the 
curtains, and staring out into the light. 

“ Come here,” she said abruptly. “ Come back and 
talk to me ! Ho, don’t stare at me, Jack. I look 
awful bad, I know. Kiss me with your eyes shut.” 

His foot struck the portmanteau as she clasped his 
neck. 

“Don’t think of him,” she whispered. “You’ve 
got to go in a minute and that’s the end. Kiss me 
first.” 

The voice of the maid reached them, coming up the 
stairs. 

“ Kiss me,” she muttered. “ Quick, quick, I don’t 
care a cent for him, fact ! He’s nothing — he’s less 
than nothing. If you like. I’ll never speak to him 
again. If he writes, I’ll — damn him. Jack, kiss me ! ” 

And “ Jack” kissed her with a sob in his throat be- 
fore Sir John Chetwynd, Bart., was driven back to 
Camelot Square. 


THE END. 



BY 


VALENTINE VALENTINE. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

FRANK ARNOLD. 

N 


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THE SHADOW OF DESIRE 


BY 

OSC3-OOXJ. 


“The Shadow of Desire” is redeemed from being commonplace by the 
character of the heroine. Ruth Bronson is real and worth describing. She 
is an example of what the French describe as "'la femme a temperament,” a 
woman of excellent principles, who is brought into trouble by the undue 
strength of her physical passion. This characteristic, without being offens- 
ively insisted on, is very subtly brought out in the story by constant touches, 
and especially by the part played by the villain in her fortunes. Very effect- 
ive too, is the gradual way in which her frivolous nature is weaned to noble 
aspirations by the unobtrusive devotion and magnanimity of her husband”, 

Athenocum, London, July %th, 1893, 

“The Shadow of Desire is largely a society story, with too strong a 
suggestion of the French novel about it to suit every taste, but it is a work 
of considerable power, and the authoress has given us some cleverly drawn 
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the description of hunting and other country pastimes will commend it to 
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little story will favor us with some other works of equal merit”. 

Herts Advertiser, Her t for shire, England, June 24M, 1893. 

We wish we could say as much for the tone of Mrs. J. C. Osgood's 
new book — it can hardly be a first attempt, though we lack definite knowledge 
to the contrary — as for certain literary qualities’ which mark its composi- 
tion; for example, those of successful character delineation and, in still high- 
er degree, of graphic narration. These qualities — and they are of course 
all important in the novelist’s art — reveal themselves on almost every page”. 

Hertfordshire Express. Hertfordshire, July ^th, 1893. 

‘‘The Shadow of Desire” is a novel written by an American lady well 
known in English society. The scene is laid both in America and in vari- 
ous countries of Europe, and the characters depicted are said to be portraits 
of some of the leaders of society in the New and Old worlds which will be 
readily recognized by those — who are acquainted with them. 

South American Journal. London^ England, June Ylth, 1893 


“The Shadow of Desire’* is written on the lines of the usual society 
novel, the scene shifting from Europe to America, and every page betraying 
the hand of the Anglo American. The brightness of Paris is contrasted with 
the leaden-colored waves of the North Sea and the lonely beauty of Colorado 
lakes. There is love and beauty, and diamonds and lace, hunting, gambling, 
the tinkle of bells, fascination and disillusions, wonderful flowers and strange 
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“The Shadow of Desire” is rather a unique story. The author has 
taken an every day woman and written a story that will while away a leisure 
hour. The writer is realistic in painting her heroine. 

Religio Philosophical Journal. Chicago, July ^^nd, 1893. 

“There is something fresh and unconventional about The Shado7u of 
Desire, Ruth is the most unconventional part of the book, and her charac- 
er and the gradual development of her better nature are intensely interesting. 
Few of the women, apparently ever heard of Mrs. Grundy, but although 
there is a worldly atmosphere throughout, it is the worldliness of smar^ 
American and English society as it is in real life, not only in fiction; and it 
is evident that Mrs. Osgood knows what she is talking about. There are 
some charming pictures of society and camping in Colorado, fox hunting in 
England, and life on the Riviera. There is much clever dialogue and 
plenty of thrilling incident of a by no means commonplace order. The 
story is so admirably told that one puts down the volume feeling that the time 
devoted to its perusal has not been wasted. I hope that the book is procura- 
ble in England and that Mrs. Osgood will write another”. 

Woman. London, June %ist, 

^'The Shadow of Desire" is a novel by a new and promising American 
writer, Irene Osgood. The Shadow of Desire is the work of a clever wo- 
man. Her power of constructing an interesting plot is undeniable. 

Figaro, London, June 8M. 1893. 

“The Shadow of Desire is a very entrancing work. The originality 
and startling situations which mark the story cannot fail to secure for it 
great popularity” 

Christian Globe, London, June 22nd, 1893 

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A YEAR’S TRAGEDY 


BY 


CHARLKS QURNTIN, 

Author of “A Fearless Life,” Etc. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

“Students of what might be called the psychology of love will find a 
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Times, Boston, Mass., Sept. 3d, 1893. 

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“A Year’s Tragedy” is an artistic success for the consistency with which 
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